Multicampus video on demand at Monash University

Abstract

This paper describes research into multi-campus, video-on-demand at Monash University and its application to education. In education, video is used in a highly interactive way, for which traditional analog video tape is poorly equipped. During 1995, the Advanced Network System Performance Application Group and Monash's Department of Visual Arts recognised the potential of interactive video-on-demand and began a series of trials. The first used a small system located in the Visual Arts Library at Monash's Clayton campus. Academics, librarians and students were involved in evaluating the technology for teaching, research and study. This was followed by a larger, multi-campus trial, where video-on-demand was distributed from a central point on the Clayton campus to the main libraries at Monash's Clayton and Caulfield campuses using a high speed network. The trial is being extended to Monash's Berwick campus where interactive video-on-demand is being used as a research tool and to allow experimentation with more complex systems. This paper describes the outcomes, the difficulties, the potential for video-on-demand, and the factors that may affect its eventual uptake.