Anyone who walked by Lawrence H. Landweber's computer science class at the University of Wisconsin this fall might have heard the typical sounds of a professor lecturing from the podium, referring to presentation slides, attempting a few jokes and taking occasional questions from his students. But inside, things were not always as they seemed.

Sometimes the lecturer was not Professor Landweber at all, but a professor in Japan named Jun Murai, who was projected, larger than life, on a video screen at the front of the room. At other times, the students answering questions about technical aspects of computer networking and the Internet were not the ones sitting in the classroom in Madison. They were students living halfway around the world, speaking from their seats at two universities in Japan while watching their American peers on video screens.

"We could communicate as if we were in the same room," said Dr. Landweber, who often started his classes with a greeting of "good morning" in Japanese. Such interaction from a distance has been widely cited by politicians and university administrators as the next significant enhancement to on-line education. But sending constant streams of video and audio over the Internet has always been more of a future vision than a reality. The technological barriers, like bandwidth requirements, have been too high.

Instead, the majority of synchronous distance-education courses have been broadcast through cable or satellite television -- a medium that, unlike the Internet, cannot be easily configured to enable people at multiple sites to talk to one another. The course for Japanese and Wisconsin students, which ended for Dr. Landweber's students this month, was an experiment in taking that next step.

The course was taught using high-speed Internet lines that are part of Internet 2, a multi-university project to build a faster Internet dedicated to research and education. By using Internet 2 lines, video and audio streams could move between Japan and Wisconsin at 40 megabits per second, eliminating the jerkiness and muffled sounds that would almost certainly show up over the regular Internet, especially across continents. The course also took advantage of a new Internet protocol called IPv6, a series of technical standards designed to quicken the transmission of video and audio to multiple locations at the same time. Dr. Murai is a leading expert on IPv6, which Dr. Landweber expects to be adopted soon by telecommunications networks. The current version, IPv4, has been in use for nearly 20 years.

"You'll be able to stick a camera on your computer and from your home be part of a multicast group," Dr. Landweber said. Until high-speed access is available to every household, however, such experiences are largely taking place at universities. The Japanese-Wisconsin course included graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Wisconsin; Keio University, which is just outside Tokyo; and the Nara Institute of Science and Technology, near Osaka. Dr. Murai was the lead professor for the Japanese students but lectured on six occasions to the students in the United States. Dr. Landweber gave eight lectures to the students in Japan.

Originally, the two professors had planned to share lecture duties as often as possible, but coordinating class times became a real hurdle. Dr. Landweber's class met three days a week at 8:30 a.m., which was 11:30 p.m. in Tokyo. Dr. Murai's classes (both universities are in the same time zone) met at 10:30 a.m., which was 7:30 p.m. the day before in Wisconsin. In the end, only three of the classes required students from all three sites to attend en masse. Instead, when Dr. Landweber lectured the students in Japan, he invited his Wisconsin students to join him if they wished, and he offered pizza as an incentive. When Dr. Murai lectured the students in Wisconsin, he also encouraged his students to stay late and participate, promising them sushi.

Some cultural differences turned up. The American students did not hesitate to ask questions during lectures, Dr. Landweber said, "but the Japanese students saved their questions to the end or asked them in private." He also discovered that the Japanese students would suddenly look confused when he used colloquial American phrases, like "having no clue," so he said he had tried to avoid them as much as possible.

Then again, seeing the classrooms over digital video showed how similar university life could be, even in schools 6,400 miles apart. For the first class, which has been archived with others at http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/12/circuits/articles/30dist.html#1.

Dr. Landweber and Dr. Murai both wore khakis. Many of the students wore T-shirts and jeans as they sat in rows in the lecture hall, jotting notes on paper or typing into laptop computers. Pacia Harper, one of the graduate students in Wisconsin, said she thought that the multicampus class had gone "surprisingly smoothly." "I actually realized by the third class," Ms. Harper said, "that I wasn't thinking about the technology at all."

The biggest technical glitch, students said, was the presence of an echo. When a person in Wisconsin, for example, took the microphone to say something, those words would travel to Japan and then be broadcast back to Wisconsin. People in Wisconsin would first hear the words as the person spoke them and then, a split second later, in the audio that was broadcast from Japan.

"It was very distracting to talk and hear yourself at just a little of a delay," said Brandon Schwartz, a Wisconsin student. As a temporary fix, technical assistants turned off the speakers momentarily in the classrooms where students asked questions.

Now that the course has ended, Dr. Landweber said, he is envisioning broader uses for the technology. He would like to see student members of the Association for Computing Machinery--which has members in many countries, including Japan--chatting with each other during meetings. And he would like to help biology professors at Wisconsin collaborate on human genome projects with their counterparts at Keio University.

"To me the Internet is not just about going and getting files from Web servers," Dr. Landweber said. "I want to get scientists talking to each other."

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Lecture Exchange with University of Wisconsin
In the fall semester 1999, University of Wisconsin, U.S., KEIO University, Japan and NARA Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST), Japan jointly developed a graduate school course "Introduction to Computer Networks" using the next generation Internet technology and class archiving technology. Both of Prof. Lawrence H. Landweber in University of Wisconsin and Prof. Jun Murai in KEIO University give lectures in tern. The course consists of both real-time interactive lectures and use of the archived lectures. The result of the course is treated as the 'regular' credit at all the three universities.

The real-time lectures are carried out using next generation Internet technologies developed by WIDE project, such as DVTS to transmit Digital Video stream over the Internet, IPv6 and multicast, over the very high speed Internet test bed developed and operated by the joint effort among US-Internet2, APAN(Asian Pacific Advanced Network Association), JGN(Japan GIGABIT Network), JB(Japan Research and development Network association) and WIDE project. Class archiving and on-demand lectures are carried out using the system developed by SOI (School of Internet) WG in WIDE Project.

The first lecture was done on September 28th. About 30 students in each university joined the class and discussions and questions were actively exchanged over the Internet. This course will last till the end of this year.

SOI on demand lecture
At the lecture page listed below, you can see all the lectures' archive and archive of the submitted assignments. In Introduction to Computer Networks (15 lectures, JP), you will be asked to study by your own with Introduction to Computer Networks (32 lectures, US) on demand lecture when necessary.

"Introduction to Computer Networks" - Lecture top page at University of Wisconsin (English page)

"Introduction to Computer Networks" - Lecture top page at Keio University, Policy Management and Media graduate school

Schedule
Professor Landweber and Professor Jun Murai are giving lectures remotely over the Internet on the following dates:

09/28/99 (Tue) 09:30-11:00 JST

"Introduction" (Prof. Landweber and Prof. Jun Murai)

10/04/99 (Mon) 22:25-23:40 JST

"802.11" (Prof. Jun Murai)

10/05/99 (Tue) 09:30-11:00 JST

"Introduction to Network" (Prof. Landweber)

10/12/99 (Tue) 09:30-11:00 JST

"Link Layer" (Prof. Landweber)

10/26/99 (Tue) 09:30-11:00 JST

"Packet Switching" (Prof. Landweber)

11/09/99 (Tue) 09:30-11:00 JST

"End-to-End System" (Prof. Landweber)

11/12/99 (Fri) 23:25-24:40 JST

"About this Project" (Prof. Jun Murai)

11/19/99 (Fri) 23:25-24:40 JST

"IPv6" (Prof. Jun Murai)

11/29/99 (Mon) 23:25-24:40 JST

"Multicast" (Prof. Jun Murai)

12/01/99 (Wed) 23:25-24:40 JST

"DNS" (Prof. Jun Murai)

12/07/99 (Tue) 09:30-11:00 JST

"Internetworking" (Prof. Landweber)

1/11/2000 (Tue) 09:30-11:00 JST

"Congestion Control" (Prof. Landweber)

01/25/00(Ва) 09:30-11:00 JST

"Conclusion" (Profs. Landweber and Prof. Murai)

Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company

Related sites
University of Wisconsin, Dept. of Computer Science
Keio University, Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC)
Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST)
WIDE Project
DV over IP Project
School of Interent (SOI)

Contact:
Keio University
Faculty of Environmental Information
Murai Lab
ph: +0.466.47.5111, ext 3330
press@wide.ad.jp