This past year, Lehigh University's distance education program, LESN (Lehigh Educational Satellite Network, now also featuring LESN-Online) celebrated its tenth anniversary. That's quite a milestone, but the emphasis today is on the future rather than the past. Over the next three to five years, Lehigh will be making major changes in the technologies used to deliver distance programming, the academic programs that will be delivered, and the audiences that will receive them.
For most of the past decade, Lehigh has concentrated on satellite transmissions as its primary distance education delivery technology. While satellite based technologies will continue to be important, Lehigh now has the capability to produce dozens of web-based courses each year. Approximately 40% of all Lehigh distance education students now take some or all of their courses over the Internet using synchronous and asynchronous streaming video. Newer course management and interactivity systems such as Centra and HorizonLive are playing a greater role in enhancing asynchronous courses with live two-way video and audio sessions.
The use of new networking infrastructures such as Internet 2 are being utilized for very high speed broadband connectivity between academic institutions, government agencies, and research facilities. Even newer technologies will certainly emerge over the new few years. Whatever happens, Lehigh will continue to use a range of technologies to ensure that programming is accessible to its students and organizational clients and that the quality and character of a Lehigh education is not compromised for distance students. At the same time, as many Lehigh services have become web-based in recent years, distance education students have been more and more thoroughly integrated into Lehigh's educational program. Two examples of such changes are the now widespread use of course software like Blackboard on campus and the conversion of many print journals to electronic format.
On the programming front, thanks to the generosity of the Provost
through the 2020 program, distance education is now beginning a major
new effort to assist academic departments and colleges to expand their
current distance education offerings and to develop and market new
initiatives. New programming will be most successful if it matches real
market opportunities. For that reason, efforts at program development
will be teamed with a new level of sophistication in the marketing
research and exploitation area. To that end, Lisa Moughan has joined
the University staff as Distance Education Marketing Coordinator. Lisa,
whose areas of expertise include marketing research and planning along
with client contact and service, will be busy over the next few months
learning what Lehigh has to offer, what Lehigh's existing and potential
new clients want, and how the two can fit together to create a broader
and even more successful Lehigh University distance education effort.
Blackboard 6 Offers New Features
The latest upgrade to the Blackboard course software (version 6) will be installed between the end of the spring semester and the start of summer session 1. Blackboard 6 arrives with many new and improved features, including:
All Blackboard courses will be automatically converted into version 6 courses when the upgrade is installed. Please note that many of the enhancements are to the more advanced features of Blackboard, so the basic functionality of the courses will remain the same.
Brief informational sessions on this upgrade will be presented through the end of the spring semester in the TRLC (Technology Resource Training Center) located next to the Media Center in the Fairchild Martindale Library. No advance registration is needed. Please join us in exploring some of the new features in Blackboard 6. Contact LTS technology consultants for more information about this transition (www.lehigh.edu/lts/teams/it).
Below is a listing of the upcoming sessions.
Additional sessions will be scheduled during the summer after the
upgrade is complete.
LTS Responds to Music and Video Sharing
The illegal sharing of copyrighted materials, primarily music and videos, is currently an issue on many college and university campuses. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (Public Law 105-304 enacted in 1998) introduced legal provisions that protect an Internet service provider from liability provided that the service provider, upon proper notification, acts "expeditiously" to remove or disable access to the infringing materials (17 U.S.C. 512(c)).
Lehigh University is considered the Internet service provider for campus users, including students in residence halls. Lehigh, like nearly all colleges and universities, occasionally receives notifications of claimed infringement from copyright owners and their representatives including organizations such as the Recording Industry Association of American, the Motion Picture Association of America, the Interactive Digital Software Association, and the Business Software Alliance. In accordance with the requirements of the copyright statute, Library and Technology Services (LTS) identifies the user of the computer from which the infringement is allegedly occurring and sends a notice to that individual to immediately cease all infringing activities. If the individual fails to respond to the notification in a timely manner, the port through which that computer is connected to the campus and the Internet is locked; the port remains locked until the individual conforms to the requirements of copyright law and disables all distribution of copyrighted materials from that computer. Repeat offenders are referred to the Dean of Students' Office for determination of whether charges should be brought under the University's Code of Conduct.
LTS Vice Provost Bruce Taggart addressed the Student Senate on this issue on February 11th and urged student cooperation in eliminating these illegal activities. He pointed out that in addition to copyright infringement being illegal, the programs (e.g., Kazaa, Morpheus, etc.) that are used to share these kinds of music and video files will use all campus bandwidth available to them and would continue to do so even if additional bandwidth were added. This severely reduces the responsiveness (speed) of Internet access for everyone. Some users may not even realize that their computers are being turned into "servers" by these programs such that music and video files obtained through these programs are then served out to others who are in search of those songs and videos; this distribution of copyrighted materials places that computer in violation of copyright law.
LTS is in the process of upgrading the hubs and switches in
residence halls that are part of Lehigh University's data
infrastructure. These new switches will help allocate bandwidth in an
equitable manner and will provide another tool to limit infringing
activities.
The Library Materials Center (LMC) housed in Building J on the Mountain Top campus is the home of older, lesser used books and journals. In order to relieve overcrowding in the Fairchild Martindale and Linderman Libraries more books will be transferred to that location. In the meantime the LMC requires additional shelving capacity. This summer almost half of the traditional library shelving there will be replaced by moveable high density shelving, that will double the capacity of the old shelving.
In preparation for the construction scheduled to begin in June,
materials currently stored in the LMC are now being boxed and moved to
a temporary storage location nearby. Gail Kriebel, Team Leader of
Lending Services, notes that faculty and students who need to use these
older books and journals should continue to request them as usual, but
the retrieval time may be a few days rather than next day. The project
should be completed with the materials back on the shelves by the
beginning of the fall semester.
IBM VP for Linux Clusters/Grids to Speak
Co-sponsored by Library and Technology Services and IBM, Dave Turek, Vice President for Linux Clusters and Grid Solutions at IBM, is visiting Lehigh to talk about his involvement in large scale computing projects as well as IBM's future direction in relation to high performance computing.
David Turek has been at IBM for nearly 30 years and during this time was instrumental in the development of the RS 6000 line of servers and workstations. In his most recent position, he is responsible for IBM's Linux Clusters business, GRID Computing Strategy and Technology, and OnDemand Computing for High Performance Computing. He is currently involved in projects such as the development of an IBM Super Computing GRID that will allow customers to tap into the GRID and pay for only the power they use. This new GRID is powered by IBM and Intel hardware and is based in Poughkeepsie, New York.
A full day is planned for Turek including a visit to a Network
Programming undergraduate class in Computer and Electrical Engineering,
a tour of the technology labs in the Packard Lab, and lunch with
faculty, graduate students and Vice Provosts Bruce Taggart and Dave
Williams. There will be a general session in Neville 3 at 2 pm. This
session is open to any interested student, faculty or staff member at
Lehigh University.
Library and Technology Services welcomes several new staff members this semester. Lisa Moughan has joined Distance Education as Marketing Coordinator. She recently relocated to Pennsylvania from Virginia where she was Marketing Manager for Compel, a telecommunications company. Glenn Piper has joined LTS as a member of the Student and General Services (Help Desk) Team. Glenn was formerly at Rodale Press where he supported Windows and Macintosh systems and networks. Paul Ryan has accepted the position of Senior Computing Consultant on the Client Services Team supporting the P. C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science (CEAS). Tiedan (Maggie) Huang has recently joined the Office of Distance Education as Internet Coordinator. While Maggie completed her M.S. in Instructional Design and Development at Lehigh, she worked part-time for both the College of Education and for Distance Education.
Librarians Roseann Bowerman and Kathe Morrow presented a Poster Session at the Association of College and Research Libraries Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, during April. The session, "Using Video Capture Software to Create Innovative Training Modules", demonstrated the use of the Camtasia video capture software in the creation of audio/visual tutorials of popular online databases. These tutorials are presently being utilized by students in an English "Clipper" course taught by Professor Edward Gallagher.
Technology Management Senior Analyst Tony Casamassa and Scientific and Desktop Computing Team Leader Gale Fritsche gave a presentation entitled "Streamlining Support and Management through the Implementation of Active Directory" at the EDUCAUSE Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference in Baltimore during January.
Enterprise Systems Implementation Senior Analyst Gerry Lennon and Willa Ostrosky, Director of Information Systems in the Lehigh University Development Office, presented at the SCT Summit during March in New Orleans. Their topic was On-line Giving with Banner using SCT Banner and TouchNet.
Dave Morrisette, Systems Administrator for EECS/CEAS,
successfully completed the requirements to become a Red Hat Certified
Technician supporting linux-based systems.
125 Years of Libraries at Lehigh: Scenes from the Celebration
The Linderman t-shirt gets a "classic" look.
Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun, lunches at Pastaficio's in Campus Square with creative writing students of Professor Betsy Fifer, Jean Farrington and Sharon Yoshida from the Library Friends Board.
A Lehigh student signs Linderman's birthday card.
Photo by Dean Krause
Photo by Liz Colleynce Education Registrations
by Delivery Method
City of Light author Lauren Belfer signs books after her April 1st talk, part of the On the Same Page program at Lehigh.