Multimedia InfoWay for the Development of Distance Education and Health by Amazonian Universities:
Implementation of the Telematics Network of the Virtual Campus of the Amazonian Universities and Construction of Multimedia Resource Centres for Distance Education and Health with a view to sustainable development of the Region.

Jackson Colares da Silva – jcolares@fua.br
Antonio Tobias Silveira - tobias@ufpa.br
Angela Aparecida Souto - asouto@unir.br
Cirilo Simoes Filho - cirilo@unifap.br
Marco Antonio Lucas - luckcas@yahoo.com

 

 

 

UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO ACRE
UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO AMAPÁ
UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO AMAZONAS
UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO PARA
UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE RONDÔNIA
UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE RORAIMA

(Translated by Roberto A. Mueller, WAOE and Teleeducation)

(Revised by Takeshi Utsumi on 10/06/01; Conversion rate from Brazilian Real to US$ is R$2.7/US$1.0)


Index

1. Project's Title

2. Participanting Institutions

3.
Objectives

3.1 General Objectives
3.2 Specific Objectives

4. Justification

5. Project's Concept

6. Multimedia Resource Centres (MRC) for Distance Education

6.1 Concept
6.2 MRC Performance
6.3 MRC Configuration

6.3.1 MRC at Main Campus
6.3.2 MRC Physical Description and Equipment Description at Main Campus
6.3.3 MRC Physical Description and Equipment at Back Country Centers
6.3.4 Software Licenses
6.3.5 Services to be Hired for all MRC: Main Campus and Back Country Center
6.3.6 Training Program to Maintain Services at Each MRC
6.3.7 Master's and Specialized Programs in Distance Education

7. Amazonian CampusNet - Virtual Campus of the Amazonian Universities

7.1 Objectives of the Amazonian CampusNet
7.2 Clients
7.3 Methodology to Be Developed for the Amazonian CampusNet

8. Activities for MRC Implementation - Chronology

8.1 Infrastructure and Technological Framework Construction

8.1.1 Building Construction in Main Campuses and Back Country Centers

8.2 Construction of Feasible Connections Among Main Campuses and Back Country Centers

8.2.1 Server Installation and Configuration

8.3 Work Station Installation in Laboratories and MRC Rooms
8.4 Videoconference Systems Installation and Configuration
8.5 Equipment General Testing, Net Traffic, Internet Access and Videoconference

9. Daily Activities

General Project Budget - Part I

Costs of Physical Structure

General Project Budget - Part II

Main Campus Equipment - Summary of Costs

Back Country Centers

Back Country Center: Equipment - Investment Summary

General Project Budget - Part III


Consumption Spending

Total Cost of the Distant Education Program for the Whole Region

Acre
Amapa
Amazonas
Para
Rondonia
Roraima

Investment Per Amazonian State

Figure 01. Investment and Expenditure (Percent)


1. Project's Title

Multimedia InfoWay for the Development of Distance Education and Health by Amazonian Universities:

Implementation of the Telematics Net of the Virtual Campus of the Amazonian Universities and Construction of Multimedia Resource Centres for Distance Education and Health with a view to sustainable development of the Region.

2. Participating Institutions

3. Objectives

3.1 General Objectives

3.2 Specific Objectives

4. Justification

Technological transformations and their integration in the teaching and learning process are shifting educational paradigms significantly at all educational levels, creating new learning environments, influencing organizational reforms as combining these environments and integrated learning facilities. In other words, our plan is to effectively leverage new trends centred on the enrichment and improvement of curricula and learning institutions. Referring specifically to integrated support services, the New Information and Communication Technologies (N-ICT) enables teacher and student interconnection at all educational levels - from basic education to higher education, even with outreach programs tied to corporations and communities, offering a wide variety of relevant information and expertise for all possible communications and conducting public affairs. It is clearly a way to enhance infrastructure access and learning opportunities.

For this reason, when we consider an online teaching model supported by the utilization of different technological possibilities to meet with the expectations and demands of Amazonian communities, we have to first address issues such as the following:

a) the availability of IT to the regional inhabitants;

b) the curricular structure of the courses; and finally,

c) the individual student characteristics and the new relation they assume with technological learning resources.

For Jesus Salinas (1999), the possibilities offered by the new technologies, namely the telematics networks for a learning infrastructure, enable an increasing number of students to be characterized as users with a new relation to knowledge, with new learning practices and with easier adaptation to rapid social transformations. To realize this, technological and pedagogical reforms are needed, those which can facilitate customized learning and online cooperative learning, enabling more interaction and knowledge exchange. Thus the Federal Public Universities of northern Brazil, as higher educational institutions, accountable to the region's needs, are searching for answers to the social demands for high educational standards, to constantly progress, look not for conventional alternatives but instead envision the forerunner of a macro-project to enable sustainable development in the Region.

Some intrinsic and practical issues, in meeting needs and anticipating obstacles, are as follows:

A clear distinction pertains between efforts to build educational delivery systems and the production of contents to be taught. For the former the role of high technology must be investigated, a task not always easy because it demands expertise. For the latter the educational responsibility of the universities must be preserved. The teachers of each class are responsible for the educational contents, as experts in their specialized fields. For the technologies to be used as a means of delivery, online educational and health professionals, experts in software, hardware, methods, languages and in several online tools are to be responsible. The former must exercise the care and wisdom required by education, while the latter has to tune in to the rapid transformations imposed by informatics and telecommunications. An equilibrated division of labor would neither trample on education nor delay its technological progress.

From the above characterization, the possibility of producting instructional means in a centralized way arises, with specialized persons and with top technological resources, to be used in a decentralized way by many people, in many places, and at many times. The creation and development of courses built in advance (pre-produced) could be combined with a wide diversity of means and resources such as: supplementary reviews, additional books, educational radio and television via open or closed circuit, movies, computers and especially networks that can transmit multimedia data, video textbooks, communication by means of telephone, radio and satellite, broadband Internet, and so on, just in time.

The suitable integration of these means is called the "multimedia approach." The logic of these courses is characterized by a centralized production combined with a decentralization of its apprenticeship. Along similar lines, the possible production of self-instruction courses arises, by means of elaboration of resources for independent study, with clear objectives, a self-evaluation process, exercises and complementary texts. These resources may become self-sufficient and become a framework for the study of a set of other texts, encouraging observational capacity, critical thinking, and pluralism of ideas, especially valuable dimensions of university studies. Individual study should not exclusively characterize this teaching mode, but learning to learn constitutes a foundation especially important for distance education, driving it through to successful application.

Therefore the Federal Universities of Acre, Amapa, Amazonas, Para, Rondonia and Roraima, concerned to offer good educational services, responding to the needs of the above described demands, and attending to the actual work marketplace, present this project: the Multimedia InfoWay for the Development of Distance Education and Health by Amazonian Universities, and construction of Multimedia Resource Centres (MRC) for Distance Education with a view to the sustainable development of the Amazon region.

The technological infrastructure will be made available by means of communication and Internet networks, and dedicated personnel, by enhancing and structuring programs, developing, producing and publishing educational resources in printed format, digital format, audio-visual and multimedia formats for effective functioning of the Amazonian CampusNet (Virtual Campus of the Amazonian Universities). This will support the on-campus courses in the first phase, and in a second phase will enable the availability and management of extension courses, undergraduate and graduate distance education, supporting the teaching and learning process, enhancing its activity, making it more stimulating and autonomous, increasing the study opportunities in the group of Amazonian member States in a significant way, and consequently in all of Latin American coountries.

5. Project's Concept

The project's proposal brings together the qualities of several IT and multimedia communication approaches, broadband Internet and videoconferencing, intending the construction of a powerful distance education and health supporting tool.

The plan is to implement a Multimedia Resource Centres (MRC) network for Distance Education on the campuses of the participating universities. The units localized in the campus of each institution will be responsible for the production of electronic publications and printed publications to be used in the courses and programs of the Virtual Campus. The other units, in the back country of each state will be responsible for the distribution and transmission of the contents. All these units will be connected together by a telecommunications network, structured in each state by a backbone responsible for the connection of back country centers to the main campus of each university and a regional backbone, responsible for the connection to all the universities. The MRC units will be the points of presence to provide access to the system in each area.

6. Multimedia Resource Centres (MRC) for Distance Education

6.1 Concept

Even though that the Multimedia Resource Centres (MRC) characterize the strong presence of technological components and these fundamentally hinge on Telematics connections and other resources offered by N-ICT, we will use a concept that is in our environment since long ago: the concept of Scholar Resource Centres as a starting point to help understand the structure and determine the functions of a MRC. This way we must admit a revision of this term, mainly when we introduce concepts associated with integration of the N-ICT, multimedia, collaborative work, flexible and distance learning.

Bezswick (1972) defined resource centres as an organized and indexed collection of resources for consulting proposes, but without availability for production. Merrill and Drob (1977) also made a definition for this theme; they affirmed that the Resource Centres for learning needed to somehow make available all that is necessary for creation, distribution and transmission of contents for presentations of individual or group interest, of audio, video television and printed resources; by a team of people to help the teacher in creation, presentation, and evaluation of the course contents. These authors define MRC for learning as a organizational structure constituted by a director and his staff with the respective equipment, a team of specialized people with production expertise, to search for and present instructional contents, to promote development and planning of the services entailed in the curriculum and faculty of a university campus.

Vidorreta (1978) referenced three characteristics in his point of view to definitively understand a Resource Centre:

a) It is a learning place for the students, useful to enable students to follow an autonomous program and of independent study, or even to develop a program in groups whether guided or not by the professor.

b) For professors, the resource centre makes available all the contents and equipment necessary to their class preparation and to apply in their own context.

c) It is a place to store contents and equipment duly registered and catalogued, a place to use contents and didactic equipment, because it offers suitable facilities.

A definition that can concatenate these three features would be: a learning place to find the educational contents to be used inside or outside the MRC, for teachers and students, individually or in groups.

Dunnett (1985) proposed that MRC go beyond managing and making available technological resources to also be a Curriculum Control Centre, which would administrate curricula, similar to the managerial control of the institution. Among the functions of this Control Centre would be the rationalization of resources, including a connection of the institution with the surrounding society.

Up to the nineties we find definitions like that from Wang (1994), supporting Merrill (1977), McPheeters (1980) and Langhoff (1980), concluding that MRC must be a field, single or not, where each individual student or group of students may find a wide diversity of resources and therefore learn by themselves. Cabero (1999) understands that these centres must be like institutions created to make new technologies available to teachers and students. He points out that these must not centralize their activities only on maintenance, and the obligations of service, but truly expand their functions, developing activities in resources selection, evaluation of programs and research on new technologies. This way, the MRC is an organism that has a basic physical and technological flow sequence, specialized staff, and makes available diverse services in the learning institution. Among its most important activities can be mentioned those related to programs management, ownership of courses and/or licensing agreements, from the production to the distribution of courses, whether face-to-face, online or mixed, the availability of diverse learning resources and, finally, to advise projects and provide tutorial services.

6.2 MRC Performance

As a consequence of the above, we may say that the most important performance of a MRC is basically to surmount space and time limitations. That is, the availability of educational resources for autonomous learning based on the use of N-ICT must facilitate access for all those people with some connection to the in-person centres but with difficulty in relying on regular meeting times, moreover to be available for those that do not have the necessary equipment in order to access the most advanced resources, enabling users to take advantage of and use the resources that otherwise would not be accessible. In this sense, for reference we will use what Vidorreta (1978) pointed out as the function of a school resource centre:

Authors such as Wang (1994), Merril (1977), McPheeters (1980) and Langhoff (1980) defend a different nomenclature; they see this organism as a Centre of Educational Resources to perform the following:

Therefore a MRC must have the technologies necessary to inform, for formal education, to research and build didactics contents to attend the specific educational needs on the intended context to be installed.

6.3 MRC Configuration

As mentioned before, the MRC unit at the main campus of each university will be responsible for management, production and distribution of the contents to be used in the courses. Additionally, it will be responsible to provide access for the campuses in the back country to the network. On the other hand, the units in the back country centers will be points of presence on the network, appropriate to distribute as well as to consume the contents produced at the main campus. Therefore, the configurations of the MRC units for the main campuses will be different from the configurations of the MRC units in the back country areas.

6.3.1 MRC at Main Campus

The MRC units at the main campuses of the universities will be configured with equipment, software, telecommunication resources, meeting space, and specialized staff, grouped through the departments, divisions and laboratories:

Administration of the Centre

Department of Production of Educational Contents and Multimedia.

This department will develop its activities by means of four divisions and the audio-visual laboratory.

Department of Resource Distribution

This department will coordinate two divisions:

Network Management Department

Research and Development Department

This department will operate as an initiatives catalyst organized in agreed-forms involving government, academy and industry. Its objective is the development of technologies for implementation of networks with higher speeds compared with commercial webs, enabling experimental services, usually restricted to the research community. By this way, its purpose will be to perform a vanguard role, closer to test bed than to normal service.

6.3.2 MRC Physical Description and Equipment Description at Main Campus

 

MRC Construction at Main Campuses

 

DESCRIPTION

Quantity

Area (square meters)

Area (square meters) Total

Value p/square meters; (R$)

Value p/square meters; (US$)

Total (R$)

Total (US$)

1

Administration Room

1

40

40

R$ 675,00

250.00

27.000,00

10,000.00

2

Meeting Room

1

30

30

R$ 675,00

250.00

20.250,00

7,500.00

3

Videoconference Room for 50 people

2

80

160

R$ 540,00

200.00

86.400,00

32,000. 00

4

Teleroom

2

60

120

R$ 540,00

200.00

64.800,00

24,000.00

5

Media Library

3

70

210

R$ 540,00

200.00

113.400,00

42,000.00

6

Informatics Laboratory for 30 people

2

60

120

R$ 540,00

200.00

64.800,00

24,000.00

7

Network Services

1

40

40

R$ 540,00

200.00

21.600,00

8,000.00

8

Educational content production room with 4 environments

1

80

80

R$ 540,00

200.00

43.200,00

16,000.00

9

Audiovisual Laboratory (recording studio)

1

60

60

R$ 540,00

200.00

32.400,00

12,000.00

10

Common area

1

120

120

R$ 540,00

200.00

64.800,00

24,000. 00

 

Total

 

 

980

 

 

R$ 538.650,00

U$

199,500.00

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Equipments Cental Campus

Administration Rooms

Directer's room, Secretary, Project Coordination

IT

DESCRIPTION

Quantity

Unit Value (R$)

Unit Value (US$)

Total (R$)

Total (US$)

A

Diverse Furniture (table, chairs, cabinets, etc.)

1

5.400,00

2,000.00

5.400,00

2,000.00

B

Computer

5

4.050,00

1,500.00

20.250,00

7,500.00

C

Laser printer 8 ppm

2

1.620,00

600.00

3.240,00

1,200.00

D

No-break of 3 KVA

1

4.050,00

1,500.00

4.050,00

1,500.00

 

Total

R$ 32.940,00

U$

12,200.00

 

Meeting Room – Quantity 01

IT

DESCRIPTION

Quantity

Unit Value (R$)

Unit Value (US$)

Total (R$)

Total (US$)

A

Television, 33”

1

2.700,00

1,000.00

2.700,00

1,000.00

B

VCR

1

540,00

200.00

540,00

200.00

C

Furniture

1

3.240,00

1,200.00

3.240,00

1,200.00

D

Videoconference system

1

27.000,00

10,000.00

27.000,00

10,000.00

 

Total

R$

33.480,00

U$

12,400.00

 

Department of Resource Distribution

Videoconference Room - 02

IT

DESCRIPTION

Quantity

Unit Value (R$)

Unit Value (US$)

Total (R$)

Total (US$)

A

Document camera

2

10.800,00

4,000.00

21.600,00

8,000.00

B

Computer

2

5.400,00

2,000.00

10.800,00

4,000.00

C

VCR

2

540,00

200.00

1.080,00

400.00

D

Auxiliary camera

2

5.400,00

2,000.00

10.800,00

4,000.00

E

Sound system (amplifier, box and table)

2

5.400,00

2,000.00

10.800,00

4,000.00

F

Digital Projector

2

13.500,00

5,000.00

27.000,00

10,000.00

G

Furniture

2

5.400,00

2,000.00

10.800,00

4,000.00

J

Projection screen

2

1.350,00

500.00

2.700,00

1,000.00

K

No break 3 KVA

2

4.050,00

1,500.00

8.100,00

3,000.00

L

TV/Monitor image return

2

2.700,00

1,000.00

5.400,00

2,000.00

M

White board

2

1.350,00

500.00

2.700,00

1,000.00

N

Videoconference System

2

54.000,00

20,000.00

108.000,00

40,000.00

 

Total

R$ 219.780,00

U$

81,400.00

 

Teleroom Quantity: 02

IT

DESCRIPTION

Quantity

Unit Value (R$)

Unit Value (US$)

Total (R$)

Total (US$)

A

Television, 33”

2

3.510,00

1,300.00

7.020,00

2,600.00

B

Furniture

2

8.100,00

3,000.00

16.200,00

6,000.00

C

Magnetic white board

2

540,00

200.00

1.080,00

400.00

 

Total

 R$ 24.300,00

U$

9,000.00

 

Informatics Laboratory, Quantity: 2

IT

DESCRIPTION

Quantity

Unit Value (R$)

Unit Value (US$)

Total (R$)

Total (US$)

A

Microcomputer

42

2.160,00

800.00

90.720,00

33,600.00

B

Laser Printer 8 ppm

2

1.620,00

600.00

3.240,00

1,200.00

C

Furniture

2

5.400,00

2,000.00

10.800,00

4,000.00

E

No-break 3 KVA

4

4.050,00

1,500.00

16.200,00

6,000.00

F

Switch 24 gates

2

8.100,00

3,000.00

16.200,00

6,000.00

G

Magnetic white board

2

540,00

200.00

1.080,00

400.00

 

Total

R$

138.240

U$

51,200.00

 

Media Library, Quantity: 1

IT

DESCRIPTION

Quantity

Unit Value (R$)

Unit Value (US$)

Total (R$)

Total (US$)

B

Microcomputer

10

2.160,00

800.00

21.600,00

8,000.00

C

VCR

5

540,00

200.00

2.700,00

1,000.00

E

Television  20”

5

1.080,00

400.00

5.400,00

2,000.00

F

No-break 3 KVA

2