Establishing Videoconferencing Infrastructure in R. Macedonia

Vladimir Trajkovik, Betim Cekorov Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information

Technologies “Ss Cyril and Methodius University”

Skopje, R. Macedonia trvlado@feit.ukim.edu.mk;

beni.cekorov@feit.ukim.edu.mk

Enrica Caporali, Elena Palmisano, Juna Valdiserri School of Engineering University of Florence

Florence, Italy enrica.caporali@unifi.it; elena.palmisano@unifi.it;

vices@unifi.it

Abstract— In the next decades European Higher Education will face the major challenges and opportunities of globalization with accelerated technological developments with new providers, new learners and new types of learning. New educational requirements stimulated by the innovative telecommunication technologies together with novel educational materials and methodologies pave the way for the introduction of videoconferencing systems that can be used to establish distance learning environments. The three-year Project ViCES (Video Conferencing Educational Services) was launched and financed by the European Commission within the TEMPUS (Trans-European Mobility Scheme for University Studies) Programme. The VICES project will provide Republic of Macedonia with a technological infrastructure and learning environment that eases student and academic mobility as well as support the process of harmonization of different curricula among educational institutions. This paper presents the different characteristics of the ViCES infrastructure.

Keywords—Videoconferencing, Learning Environments, Higher Education, TEMPUS

I. INTRODUCTION Higher Education includes teaching, research and social

services activities of Universities and refers to education provided by Universities, colleges, institutes of technology and other institutions awarding academic degrees or professional certifications. Higher Education plays a very important role in the development of human beings and societies and enhances their cultural and economical development.

It seems that one of the most important educational stimuli today is characterised by a need for flexibility and individualisation of educational processes. Higher education can take place in a wide range of educational environments that have different educational goals. Since the traditional classroom environment cannot effectively provide this, new educational environments should be introduced.

New educational paradigms and innovative practices stimulated by the new information and telecommunication technologies can be used to provide instant access to the most updated educational materials. The same principle can be used to enhance communication between actors in educational processes supported by different learning methodologies, thus enabling a more effective learning [13].

It is expected that Higher Education should be based on state-of-the-art research and development, thus fostering innovation and creativity in society. Students are becoming very familiar with the possibility to use different technologies for their studies and research. This fact opens the possibility to create a novel education environment, where high-end internet based services are used to implement techniques which cannot be implemented in traditional classrooms. Technology itself is not inherently good or bad to support educational processes. It is the way it is used to achieve learning outcomes that matters and that can be treated as learning experience itself. Comprehensive new approaches to valuable learning, which will allow citizens to move freely between learning settings, jobs and countries, making the most of their knowledge and competences, should be always considered as very important for every community. Video conferencing educational services, used in combination with other educational services, can significantly ease this access by lowering the cost of original production of educational material and increasing the possibility to update educational materials more frequently [12] [19].

The creation of the European Higher Education Area is addressed by the Bologna Process [5] [6]. Since 1999, this process has been devoted to create more attractive, comparable, compatible and coherent education systems throughout Europe. In order to achieve these objectives and encourage cooperation between European countries, Higher Education Institutions are taking part in a wide range of programmes, such as: LLP (Lifelong Learning Programme) [7], ERASMUS MUNDUS [8], TEMPUS (Trans-European Mobility Scheme for University Studies) [9]. These programmes stimulate European higher education institutions to further internationalize their activities in order to engage in global collaboration for sustainable development.

The mobility of students, early stage researchers and staff is considered an added value in the quality of programmes and excellence in research and for the academic and cultural internationalization of European Higher Education. Mobility is important for personal development and employability. It fosters respect for diversity and the capacity to deal with other cultures. It encourages linguistic pluralism, underpinning the multilingual tradition of the European Higher Education Area.

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Mobility also increases cooperation and competition between Higher Education Institutions.

Video conferencing enabled learning is a new way of acquiring knowledge, which is highly adaptable to different kinds of student profiles, from people that do not have opportunities to attend traditional courses to a practical enhancement of ordinary courses with additional access to knowledge. It facilitates and promotes co-operation at national and international level, generating new networks and more immediate communications processes of personal and professional contacts [16]. In this way the video conferencing learning environment provides virtual mobility enabling its benefits to a more general public. It enables the most suitable participants (both from instructor and student perspective) to participate to classes by reducing travel and availability stress. Exchange of knowledge and consultation process among students and available expert authorities (professor/instructor), are very important aspects of learning, in addition to the static contents that are provided in books and different digital multimedia.

In this framework, the University of Florence and the Ss Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje launched in 2008 a three-year TEMPUS Joint Project called VICES (Videoconferencing Educational Services) financed by the European Commission in the frame of the TEMPUS IV for the period 2009-2012 [10].

The project, carried out by the University of Florence and the Ss Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, together with all consortium members (three partner Universities of the European Union (IT, BE, HU) and different Universities in Albania (AL), Republic of Macedonia (MK) and Serbia (RS)), will introduce a new approach towards the treatment of Information Communication Technologies at University level. It is expected that VICES will provide an environment that supports and increases student and academic mobility as well as infrastructures that will ease the process of harmonization of different curricula among educational institutions.

This paper explains the approach to the setting of such educational environment. The proposed approach addresses multiple levels of technology and services that need to be implemented. The technology levels include networking infrastructure and video conferencing infrastructure. The service levels include web based portal comprinsing services for live video conferencing and video streaming, educational services and their implementation, organizational services needed to support educational activities, and financial input needed to provide sustainability to the whole video conferencing educational environment. This paper describes all levels of the system but it gives more details on the network infrastructure, video conferencing infrastructure, and video conferencing portal.

The networking infrastructure that will be provided for video conferencing purposes is elaborated in section 2 of this paper. The video conferencing infrastructure is presented in section 3. The functionalities of video conferencing educational environment portal are explained in section 4. Section 5 sketches the proposed educational methodology for implementing educational services. Section 6 concludes the paper.

II. NETWORKING INFRASTRUCTURE FOR VIDEO CONFERENCING

R. Macedonia has a population of 2 million inhabitants, an area of 25,333 km2 (9,781 sq mi), five state-owned Universities and several private Universities. The Macedonian Academic and Research Network (MARNet), delivers advanced information and communication infrastructure to the academic and research communities in R. Macedonia. The logical scheme of the MARNet IP Networking infrastructure is given in Figure 1.

MARNet is connected to the European Academic Network via GEANT network. Internally, it can connect University Campuses in four different manners. First, the campuses of group 2 and 3 can be connected via MM or SM fiber enabling connection data speed (bandwidth) of up to 1 Gbps. The second connection type (Campuses type 1) is leased line and the third connection type is a wireless connection (Campuses type 4). The wireless link can provide bandwidth of up to 4 Mbps. The connection to different governmental institutions and agencies is also provided.

Video conferencing involves a two-way video, audio and data communication between two or more parties over a remote connection. Video conferencing is carried out over a variety of media, the most popular of which uses Internet Protocol (IP) technology. The cost of video conferencing over IP is getting so low that it has become the most popular means of video conferencing [14].

Streaming is considered a very important internet based technology that enables the deployment of video conferencing services. Streaming covers one way transmission of audio, video and possibly other content to an end user. With reference to videoconference, archiving and subsequent methods of retrieval of archive content must be specified.

Real-time streaming of videoconferences is a service of great importance.

University Campus Type 1

SiSi

Locaal faculties

National Broadcasting companyComm. Tower

GEANT

University Campus Type 3

SiSi

University Campus type 2

SiSi

Dispersed institutes

MM fiber/1Gbps

wireless link 4Mbpsanalog lease line

optical laser connection 155Mbps

SM fiber/1Gbps1 x STM1 (155Mbps)

30 dial-in ISDN/async lines

Peering with ISPsNational

ISPs

University Campus Type 4

Several Ministriesof the Government

Figure 1. MARNet IP Networking Infrastructure

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It should be noted that the quality of service of the real

time video streaming is of great importance for the end user perception of the content.

This importance is even increased in case of bidirectional interactive streaming such as video conferencing in education. The second important technical issue for video conferencing is the video format resolution [15]. Figure 2 compares the typical formats used in different video standard that can be streamed. It is obvious that more audience requires better video resolution. Unfortunately, this also means that more communication bandwidth should be dedicated to the video conferencing session that results in more difficult providing of the needed quality of service. The connection bandwidth that can enable high quality video conferencing in Full HD is 4 Mbps. It is as a target bandwidth for an acceptable picture quality of Full HD. It is defined taking in mind the burst nature of the bandwidth. The bandwidth usage is restricted on a rolling window basis to a target bandwidth. This bandwidth can burst up to 20% higher to a ceiling over this rolling window. So, having in mind that the rolling window is 1s and the target bandwidth is 4Mbps, then in any given period of 1s the total bandwidth should average out to 4Mbps (the rolling window means that the 1s window can be arbitrarily picked.). The ceiling dictates that within the rolling window, the peak at any given moment in that rolling window will never go above 20% higher than the target average. So, the maximum burst in a 1s rolling window could be as high as 4.8Mbps (but will not be sustained at this rate). The burst is only on the Variable Bit-Rate (VBR) video stream and not the Constant Bit-Rate (CBR) audio stream and the rolling window is currently defined as 1s, but is subject to change.

For all configurations, there is also an additional VoIP call of 64Kbps that can be made from the Videoconferencing system. The following are the bandwidth and basic Quality of Service (QoS) calculations for the Video conferencing system, at 1080p (Full HD picture quality without IP overhead):

• 3 primary video streams (4 Mbps each): 12 Mbps • 3 primary audio streams (64 Kbps each): 192 Kbps • 1 auxiliary audio stream: 64 Kbps • 1 auxiliary video stream: 400 Kbps TOTAL (Average): 12,656 Kbps TOTAL (Including Bursts): 15.3 Mbps

Figure 2. Typical resolutions for standard video formats

The latency between two Videoconferencing endpoints

should be <150ms (one-way). The configured threshold behavior is that if a latency is >200 ms, a warning message is displayed “Experiencing network delay”, and if the latency is >400 ms, a 2nd warning message is displayed “Experiencing severe network delay”.

Jitter within the system should be less than 5 ms peak, for a total of 10 ms peak to peak. For example, if the average latency is 50 ms, then the minimum and maximum latency should not be outside of 45-55 ms (or 10 ms peak to peak). With configured threshold behavior: > 20 ms, a warning message is displayed “Experiencing network congestion”; > 40 ms, the system will lower motion handling from Best to Good.

Packet loss should be under 0.05 % from end to end. With configured threshold behavior: > 0.1 %, a warning message is displayed “Experiencing network congestion”; > 0.2%, the system will lower motion handling from Best to Good.

If such bad condition persists in the network, the videoconferencing call will be disconnected and an error message will be displayed “Call could not proceed due to excessive network congestion”.

Today, multipoint videoconferencing capability is a required component for any collaborative application. Over 40% of today’s meetings consist of individuals from three or more sites. The first factor that must be considered when implementing multipoint videoconferencing is network bandwidth. It’s important to note that multipoint videoconferencing meetings are simply multiple point-to-point meetings terminated on a central videoconferencing management system. If such system should be capable of simultaneously terminating 4 videoconferencing sessions, at 15.3 Mbps each, a 61.2 Mbps should be guaranteed by central site where the management system is located.

During a Multipoint session, the call flow between two videoconferencing endpoints goes through the Multipoint switch. The latency, jitter and packet loss between two endpoints during the Multipoint videoconferencing call must still be that of the point-to-point call. That means that latency between the endpoints and the Multipoint switch should be half minus the delay added by management site.

According to previous calculation, Campuses that are connecting using fiber connection types (University campuses of type 2 and 3) can participate in multipoint conferencing sessions directly or via videoconferencing management system. They can be also used as location for eventual backup videoconferencing management, recording and streaming servers. The other campuses can only establish single point communication. This means that they can participate to the multipoint conferencing sessions only through Videoconferencing Management center.

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III. VIDEOCONFERENCING INFRASTRUCTURE A national educational video conferencing network will be

based on Polycom’s HDX series installed in every major university throughout the country. It also includes multi conference management centres, video recording and streaming servers. It is planned to cover more than 80% of student population in R. Macedonia. Polycom technology was accepted as being the best solution for this activity because it has a wide range of video and teleconferencing solutions based on open standards.

The VICES project will provide one centred Video conference management system and seven video conference classrooms in R. Macedonia, as well as one video conferencing classrooms in Albania and Serbia. The general scheme of the VICES video conferencing infrastructure is given in Figure 3.

The Video Conference management centre will be facilitated by the Macedonian Academic and Research Network (MARNet), due to the already established management of the academic network infrastructure. This equipment will consist of three parts: management software, recording and streaming server and multipoint conference units. The management software will be able to utilize and optimize the network traffic generated by the video conferencing sessions. The recording and streaming server will provide recording capabilities for any video conferencing sessions, thus enabling their later streaming to any web enabled client [17]. It has to be stated, that in this case, the students will not be able to interact with their instructors. The multipoint conference units should enable parallel and multicast session among different video conferencing classrooms.

Figure 4a presents the initial geographical placement of the video conferencing classrooms within R. Macedonia covered by the VICES project, while Figure 4b presents the potential video conferencing classrooms. The potential classrooms locations are determined according the locations where the Universities participating in the project have distant centers. As it can be seen from this figure, it covers a significant part of the population in R. Macedonia, providing equal access to more than 80% of students to higher education facilities.

Network centre

Stip

Skopje

TetovoSkopje

Bitola

Skopje

Skopje

Serbia

Albania

Figure 3. The VICES video conferencing infrastructure

Figure 4. (a) Initial and (b) potential placement of video conferencing classrooms

In order to make video conferencing to function effectively, instruction and course content must be interactive, and the teacher must exhibit flexibility and creativity when teaching to the class. At the same time, he/she has to be able to manipulate multimodal content (video, audio, and data) that should be presented to students. In addition to this, technical support for managing the video conferencing equipment is required. A typical scenario for the 30 students’ classroom includes 2 video screens that are presented to students at the same time – one for standard video conferencing and one for educational material. Figure 5 illustrates those video screams and related video sources.

Figure 5. Elements of Multimodal presentation in video conferencing

classroom

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IV. VIDEOCONFERENCING PORTAL The VICES video conferencing portal will enable students

from different Universities to attend different lectures on the same or similar subjects. Students will be able to exchange their ideas and educational outputs with wider student communities sharing similar interests [4].

The Videoconferencing portal has two main functionalities: access to live videoconferencing and access to already recorded videoconferencing sessions by video streaming.

Life videoconferencing user scenario is enabled by the Video conference management system. It establishes video conference sessions and enables possible recording of the Video Conference session. Recorded video sessions can be stored for further use.

Access to video streaming combines three synchronized data sources: video recordings, educational materials (e.g. slides) and hyper-links to additional internet materials. The synchronization is realized with the help of the time stamp of video record. The time stamps provide means for the determination of time related position of educational material stream. The data sources are stored in dedicated DB Server which hosts educational materials and Streaming Server which stores video records. Similar approaches are described in [2] [3] [4].

Typical streaming user scenario (given on Figure 6) starts with the selection of videos from videoconferencing. The viewing is allowed by the Streaming Server that reads the additional corresponding educational records from the DB Server. Video material is synchronized with slides and additional educational material by help of XML files containing reference to all incorporated files and time stamps.

The VICES video portal software architecture is presented in Figure 7. It is built on the video conferencing infrastructure and provides means for end home users to access life videoconferencing or recorded videoconferencing sessions using primarily web browser as an interface. The architecture of the VICES video portal combines the power of

Figure 6. Sequent diagram of Video Learning Objects

Figure 7. VICES video portal software architecture

three servers: video conferencing management system,

video streaming server, and web server that stores additional educational materials. Streaming server connects to databases of educational slides that can be presented in a synchronized way with the recorded videoconferencing session. Videoconferencing management systems establish connection with a number of videoconferencing classrooms.

V. EDUCATIONAL APPROACH Comprehensive new approaches to valuable learning,

which will allow citizens to move freely between learning settings, jobs and countries, making the most of their knowledge and competences, should be always considered very important for every community. Videoconferencing, used in combination with other educational services significantly ease this access by lowering the cost of original production of educational material and increasing the possibility to update educational materials more frequently [1].

In our approach, each videoconferencing session has three main parts:

- Interactive preparatory activities that can be supported by different technologies depending on the chosen instructional design models.

- Video conferencing session delivery which can be defined as a presentation from a recognised expert done through videoconferencing. The videoconferencing sessions should be recorded and made available afterwards to all interested parties.

- Interactive follow-up activities that should follow different instructional design models and can be supported by different technologies.

The VICES Videoconferencing Educational Services will be evaluated by students at their last year of undergraduate multidisciplinary studies in Environmental Engineering using standard evaluation techniques adopted for video conferencing systems [18] [11]. The students will be asked whether the video conferencing is useful for their studies. The questionnaires given to the students for evaluation will include three types of questions regarding: student experience in using video conferencing technologies in education, multimodal

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accessibility of the educational content, and quality of service of video conferencing.

Videoconferencing can help to make the different systems of higher education more compatible and comparable and to promote equal opportunities to quality education. Furthermore, it can guarantee accessibility, lifelong learning as an integral part of education systems by introducing flexible learning paths.

VI. CONCLUSION Higher Education will play a central role to realize the

Europe of knowledge in the decade up to 2020. A great number of initiatives are actually carried out in this direction by the European Commission and member states. In this framework, the University of Florence and the Ss Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, launched a new TEMPUS Project (VICES, Videoconferencing Educational Services) that was financed by the European Commission for the period 2009-2012.

This project introduces a new approach towards treatment of Information Communication Technologies at University level with the purpose to increase virtual student and academic staff mobility. This approach will also enable higher level of harmonization of different curricula among partner institutions and at international level. This will increase the usage of new ICT technologies within the educational process, making it more efficient in the same time.

New educational requirements and novel educational methods, such as Video Conference, supported by new telecommunication technologies enable almost instant access to most updated educational materials and methodologies.

In this framework, the European funded TEMPUS Project VICES (Videoconferencing Educational Services), carried out by the University of Florence the Ss Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, is a direct product of the need of a more adequate adaptation of the education to convenient evolutionary development of modern society, and technology as its constituent component. The proposed video portal, allows everyone to be in touch with all scientific tasks and disciplines, without being hindered from his distant location. It enables the presentation of information from relevant scientific areas, coming from corresponding experts through presentations and alternative material shown as links. In this way, every student will be provided with well-timed information and higher level of education. Videoconferencing portal assemble all the standards associated with learners and instructional theories, and estimate the quality of education in terms of those standards. This system provides video presentations synchronized with additional learning material to a large number of users and it allows the creation of different individual learning paths by combing different video learning objects.

ACKOWLEDGEMENT The authors acknowledge with gratitude the European

Commission, DG Education and Culture who funded the VICES Project under the TEMPUS IV Programme.

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