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Cisco Connected Classroom: students virtually see a life-size, floor-to-ceiling view of the professor teaching on the opposite coast/location.
The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Cisco unveiled the learning experience of the future, one that blends life-size visual communication via tele-presence with collaboration technologies that significantly enhance the way faculty, students and alumni interact and learn, no matter how distant they may be from physical classroom.
Educational institutions have been on the cutting-edge of technology use for years, but the Wharton School and Cisco initiative is taking that to a new level by using life-size, high-definition visual communications, based on Cisco TelePresence® technology with which virtually connects classrooms physically separated by thousands of miles. That means that all students, regardless of location, will be able to collaborate and participate, as if they are in the same room, as one another and their professor.
1 Classroom, 2 Coasts, access from anywhere
3000 miles separate the students in Wharton’s Philadelphia and San Francisco campuses were connected thanks to the combination of a floor-to-ceiling screen at the front of one classroom and 80-inch LED monitors on the side walls of each room, as well as large projection screens in the rear. Students and faculty feel as if they are learning and interacting in the same physical space. Looking it from the viewpoint of the professor at the lectern, students on the other coast appear to be seated in rows directly behind the local students, whereas the students in the remote classroom see the professor projected in life-size high definition on the floor-to-ceiling screen.
Wharton will utilize the Cisco® Capture, Transform, Share (CTS) video platform to enable professors to record lectures and make those lectures available for replay, with access to key content from any location and at any time, increasing the value and reach of each lecture and classroom discussion.
They intends to use the technology to:
• Provide access to some of the top leading experts — wherever they may be.
• Improve the students’ experience.
In addition to connecting Wharton’s 2 campuses and expanding education globally, Cisco’s visual presence solution will help the school to engage with alumni, to support fundraising activities add to executive education by increasing geographic reach.
Cisco is a company with a history of developing unique solutions for educational institutions and a strong corporate commitment to improving the quality of education. Through the Cisco Networking Academy™ program, the company’s 21st Century Schools initiative and numerous engagements with non-governmental organizations, whose aim is to boost opportunity through education, Cisco helped multiply the impact of technology on millions of students and teachers around the globe.
Supporting Resources:
• For more information please visit the Cisco TelePresence and Cisco Connected Learning pages
• For more information on additional technologies being used, please visit Cisco’s Capture, Transform, Share and Cisco Jabber
• Read the Borderless Networks blog and Mobility blog
• Follow Cisco Enterprise, Cisco_Mobility, TelePresence, CiscoEDU and CiscoHigherEdu on Twitter
• For more information about Cisco TelePresence news and activities, visit the Video Blog
