A. Staffing

1 At St. Augustine, letters of offer were sent to the selected applicants of the System Engineer and Web Administrator posts. The technician posts at the intra-Jamaica Centres are in the process of being advertised. The Cave Hill campus has yet to advertise for the Web Administrator post.

B. Replacement of Computers and Software

2 The unavailability of funds continues to prevent the urgently needed replacement of all the obsolete computers in UWIDEC computer labs. Funds are still being sourced for this.

3 The unavailability of funds also prevents the upgrade of the software in the computer labs. There are open source alternatives to Microsoft software such as Linux and Open Office which should be considered since the purchase price of open source software is nil.

4 Since 2001, Grisoft has been providing their anti-virus software, AVG 6, to UWIDEC at no charge. In January 2004, Grisoft offered to upgrade UWIDEC software to AVG 7 at no charge for the first year but from the second year UWIDEC would be required to pay an annual licence fee at 50% discount of the list price to continue to use the software.

5 In January 2004 Bridgit software was procured to enable course coordinators and instructors in the teleconference room to share their computer screen to all sites. Course coordinators and instructors have been using Bridgit to broadcast their Power Point presentations, train users in software applications and broadcast the notes that were hand written on the graphics tablet. The experience with Bridgit has been a tremendous improvement over using Microsoft NetMeeting. Sites not in the UWIDEC network have been connecting to Bridgit over the Internet.

C. Migration to frame relay

6 The UWIDEC network has been migrating to frame relay from international leased circuits since March 11 2004. Cayman has now been added to the UWIDEC network and when the migration is completed so will Anguilla. As of March 24, St. Kitts is the only site still to be migrated from international leased circuits to frame relay. Bahamas, Belize and Turks & Caicos would continue to be not connected to the UWIDEC network after the migration.

7 The lower recurrent cost of frame relay made it possible to bring Anguilla and Cayman into the UWIDEC network. The remaining savings will be applied to increase Internet bandwidth at the Port of Spain hub site.

8 In May 2004 the intra-Jamaica sites will also migrate to frame relay.

D. Relocation of Port of Spain hub site

9 The Campus IT services unit at St. Augustine has kindly offered space to house the UWIDEC hub site. Planning is in progress to relocate from Port of Spain to the campus during the week of May 24 2004. During that period the entire network would be unavailable.

E. CUPIDE, CKLN and E-Link Americas

10 The IT consultant for the CUPIDE project submitted his final report in January 2004. With respect to the UWIDEC network, he made a recommendation to invest in Internet infrastructure using the latest satellite technology and recommended against enhancing the existing network. The basis for his recommendation is that enhancing the current network will not enable UWIDEC to offer en masse its programmes using asynchronous web delivery.

11 The Caribbean Knowledge and Learning Network (CKLN) provides a great opportunity for UWI/UWIDEC to modernize its distance education delivery and to improve its quality of service to non-campus countries. E-Link Americas would provide the high-speed, low cost Internet connectivity for the CKLN. UWI/UWIDEC has been included in the initial CKLN project proposals but based on the project plan of CKLN the technology from E-Link Americas would not be made available until 2005.

12 UWIDEC would be going through a protracted transition period in transforming to mass asynchronous Internet delivery estimated to be a minimum of 29 months (APC P.14c). During this transition UWIDEC must maintain the current delivery mode for courses that have not been converted while supporting the courses that have been converted. Based on the amount of global research and development that is being invested in Internet technologies it is highly probable that the E-Link Americas network would be able to simultaneously support both the old UWIDEC delivery mode and the new UWIDEC delivery mode.

13 To test this it is proposed that the three sites Bahamas, Belize and Turks & Caicos be part of a pilot project to investigate whether the E-Link Americas network will support real time audio and video conferencing for UWIDEC courses. There is a high probability that the pilot will demonstrate this. Once the pilot is successful it is recommended that the entire UWIDEC network migrate to E-Link Americas.

14 To promote the development of Internet infrastructure to reach remote areas, UWIDEC must continue to lobby incumbent Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to offer low cost services for students and lobby CKLN and E-Link Americas to offer its low cost bandwidth to ISPs and cyber cafes that would offer low cost services to reach students in remote areas.

F. Implementation of new conference bridges

15 On November 11 2003 the new Polycom conference bridges were implemented due to the failure of the old Voyant bridge the previous night.

16 The change to the new bridges necessitated a change in the way sites joined conferences. In the past, sites were put into a conference from Mona and Port of Spain. In the new practice the site has to dial into the conference bridge, which is the current world wide practice.

17 More work for the site. The impact to the site is that for every conference someone has to dial into the bridge. For some sites this has increased the workload of staff. It should be noted that for Intra-Jamaica sites and some NCC sites this was standard practice for the old bridge.

18 Conferences less reliable. The UWIDEC network has always been unreliable because C&W and TSTT do not provide guaranteed levels of service and do not provide guaranteed time to restore service after an outage. In the past the sites were shielded from this unreliability by using a non-standard technology work-around (force connections) which was compatible with the old Voyant bridge. Force connections were used to negate the effects of the regular short duration outages of C&W and TSTT which would otherwise cause the site to be disconnected frequently during a conference. Force connections are incompatible with the new Polycom bridges (and any current technology) and as a result the sites would no longer be shielded from the regular short duration outages of C&W and TSTT. Every time there is an outage the site would have to dial into the bridge.

19 Work will continue to improve reliability of conferences on two fronts. C&W and TSTT will be engaged to improve the reliability of their network. Technology options similar to force connections or alternative technologies such as voice over IP (VOIP) and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) will be researched and tested. A meeting with Nortel Networks in the week of April 19 2004 is being planned and this may result in a possible technology solution.

G. C&W special Internet packages for UWI students

20 In a March 25 2004 meeting with C&W and TSTT at St. Augustine campus, it was requested that C&W and TSTT provide special Internet access packages for UWI students. C&W and TSTT are considering the request and will return with an offer.

H. Computer packages for students

21 The three campuses have arranged with suppliers, special packages for computer hardware, software and printers for students. These packages need to be extended to students in non-campus and off-campus sites and in the future to online students.

I. Debt to C&W and TSTT

22 As of March 25 2004, from a verbal report by TSTT, the debt for International Private Leased Circuits is nil. The debt for the T1 fibre optic tail circuit at Port of Spain is approximately TT$291,052.80. The debt for the 64kbps Internet connection at Port of Spain is approximately TT$193,782.67.

J. Learning Management System (LMS)

23 Since the last APC meeting no work has been done to evaluate an open source alternative to WebCT. It is strongly recommended that a sub-committee be set up to produce a report recommending the way forward for UWI with respect to a LMS.

Telecommunications Manager, UWIDEC
March 26th, 2003