Integration of Voice, Data, and Video Services via a Wide Area Network: Technical and Organizational Issues


Copyright 1991 CAUSE From _CAUSE/EFFECT_ Volume 14, Number 4, Winter 
1991. Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material is 
granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for 
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              THE INTEGRATION OF VOICE, DATA, AND VIDEO SERVICES
         VIA A WIDE AREA NETWORK: TECHNICAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL ISSUES
                            by Jan A. Baltzer

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Jan A. Baltzer is Director of Computing and Communications for the
Maricopa Community Colleges, responsible for coordinating all aspects of
voice, data, and video communications between and among the Colleges.
Prior to assuming her current position, she was Associate Dean of
Instructional Technology and Design at Rio Salado Community College. She
is a past chair of the American Association of Community and Junior
Colleges Instructional Telecommunications Consortium, currently serves
on the national advisory boards of the National University
Teleconferencing Network and the Public Services Satellite Consortium,
and is the 1991 CAUSE Editorial Committee Chair.

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ABSTRACT: The Maricopa Community College District serves eight colleges, 
two educational centers, and over 95,000 credit students per semester 
with a digital voice, data, and video wide area network. That network 
also includes connections with local high schools, elementary schools, 
and four-year institutions for the transfer of electronic documents, 
shared files, and electronic mail. This article relates how the planning 
and implementation of Maricopa's wide area network has been achieved 
through a conscious strategy of managing change and leveraging vendor
partnerships. The author describes how the information technologies
organizational structure has evolved along with the evolution of the
wide area network, creating new job functions and opening up new
opportunities for retraining and staff development.


The Maricopa Community College District, located in the Phoenix
metropolitan area, is the second largest community college district in
the United States with eight colleges and two educational centers. With
a service area of over 9,000 square miles, the Maricopa Community
Colleges enroll more than 95,000 credit students and over 40,000
noncredit students each semester.
A major part of Maricopa's mission over the past nine years has
been to provide high quality services to faculty, staff, and students
through the use of state-of-the-art information technologies. This
emphasis on the use of information technologies has led to the planning
and implementation of a districtwide network for the transmission of
voice, data, and video communications.

Network overview

Maricopa embarked on an ambitious computerization program in the
early 1980s. The key feature of this plan was to decentralize computing
with a distributed network of minicomputers along with a vast
proliferation of personal computers. In the summer of 1982, there were
approximately 150 personal computers or terminals available districtwide
for students and staff for both academic and administrative uses. Nine
years later, the colleges have over 12,000 terminals and personal
computers in support of students and staff. Most faculty have personal
computers in their offices. Laboratories at the departmental level and
large-scale open labs also exist at individual colleges throughout the
district.

     Data communications

The large-scale computing environment consists of eleven VAX
computers, all of the VAX 6000 family, located at each of the colleges
and at the District Support Services Center. The largest of these is a
VAX 6440 and the smallest is a VAX 6410. These VAX computers are linked
together at T1 transmission speeds via a districtwide digital microwave
network which was completed in the spring of 1989. Over 3,000 active
ports are currently attached to the wide area network using a variety of
networking protocols including DECNet, LocalTalk and TCP/IP. The network
backbone at each college is Ethernet.

In addition to the VAX computers, Maricopa has begun to acquire a
variety of smaller, but more powerful, department-level or special-use
servers including Sun SPARCstations, IBM RS/6000s, and Digital
DECstation 5000s. This move to the use of server technology has been
made possible by the existence of our wide area network and has opened
the door to the UNIX environment for Maricopa. All servers are connected
to the Ethernet backbone at their individual locations and, thus, to the
districtwide VAX network.

Although Maricopa's first concern was to connect individuals at all
locations within the district to each other, connectivity to the outside
world has become equally as important over the past few years. Thus we
have created leased line connections with Arizona State University
(ASU), Phoenix Unified High School District (PUHSD), and many of the
public and school libraries in Maricopa County. The ASU-to-Maricopa
link--a 56 Kbps leased line that supports electronic transcript 
exchange, electronic mail, and interlibrary activities--is Maricopa's 
link to BITNET and the Internet. The primary function of the link 
between PUHSD and Maricopa is for transmission of student data along 
with electronic mail. The library connections are used to give 
individuals in the community access to library holdings regardless of 
their location.

     Voice communications

In 1985, Maricopa began the planning and implementation of the
Telecommunications Improvement Project. The overall goals of this
project were to establish a universal wiring plan for voice, data, and
video communications, to upgrade or replace the college telephone
systems, and to construct the districtwide digital microwave network. By
the spring of 1987, the project was completed. During that two-year
period, every workstation, classroom, and conference room in the entire
district was rewired for voice and data communications, and every
classroom and conference room was wired for voice, data, and video
communications.

The old AT&T Dimension 400 telephone systems were replaced with new
NEC NEAX 2400 digital PBXs with simultaneous voice and data capability.
Voicemail systems and call accounting systems were also installed.
Today, the Maricopa District operates eleven NEAX 2400 PBXs with over
5,000 voice lines. Ninety-five percent of the instruments are digital
instruments. There are over 3,000 voicemail users within the district.
The telephone systems are connected via the districtwide microwave
network for five-digit dialing and for bypass of the local telephone
operating company for interzone calling.

     Video communications

Once the Telecommunications Improvement Project was completed and
the districtwide digital microwave network was constructed, attention
was focused on how the network might be used to transmit video among the
colleges and the district office. With the help of NEC America, we began
the Video Demonstration Project in the spring of 1989. For one month,
between the middle of April and the middle of May, shared instruction,
meetings, staff development activities, and faculty discussions took
place between Chandler-Gilbert Community College Center and Glendale
Community College using the Maricopa digital microwave network and NEC's
Visualink 3000 digital video codecs. During the one-month period, over
fifty separate events took place involving over 300 Maricopa faculty and
staff.

The demonstration project was such a success that we moved
immediately to equip four colleges with Visualink 300 digital video
codecs for two-way video and two-way audio communications. Today, six
colleges and the District Support Services Center are using the latest
digital video codec from NEC, the Visualink 5000, to share instruction
and for video conferencing of meetings.

Early in Maricopa's use of this two-way video technology, faculty
identified the need to be able to include multiple sites in a single
classroom session. We met this requirement by installing a digital
crossconnect unit and modifying it to serve as a multipoint control unit
or MCU that enables faculty to control the equipment at remote locations
from a terminal attached to the VAX data network. Using this terminal
and the multipoint control unit, faculty can select which remote
location they wish to see, or poll the locations every 30 seconds.

Impact of the wide area network

The impact of our wide area data network and the connectivity it
affords faculty, students, and staff can be seen in many areas. For
example, Maricopa is one of the largest users of DEC's electronic mail
system called All-in-One. Virtually every employee, from the custodial
staff to the chancellor, has an electronic mail account and some type of
access to terminals or personal computers on the network. Electronic
mail is the preferred method of communication and employees who do not
read their electronic mail or communicate in this way are often left
behind.

Still another example of how Maricopa's use of networking has had a
major impact on faculty and students is Electronic Forum, a computer
conferencing system developed by Maricopa staff to run on the VAX
network. Electronic Forum began when one English instructor at Glendale
Community College wanted a way for her students in a creative writing
class to be able to write anonymously and to critique and comment on
each other's work.

This academic year, Electronic Forum is available at all ten of the
Maricopa institutions and over 10,000 students are using it to
communicate with each other and with their instructors in such
disciplines as English, Biology, Communication, Engineering Science,
Math, Reading, Home Economics, and Administration of Justice. Students
can access Electronic Forum from terminals and personal computers in
open labs at each college or can use the dial-up capacity of the
Maricopa wide area network to access Electronic Forum from off-campus
locations.

Faculty report that this electronic mode of communication has
revolutionized the way students interact with each other and with their
instructors. Students appear to be more open with each other when
communicating electronically. In fact, one communication instructor has
stated that it used to take half a semester for a class to develop a
group identity and to be comfortable with each other. With Electronic
Forum, this identity is established in a matter of a few weeks.

Still another example of how Maricopa's emphasis on networking has
had major impact on individuals within the district can be found in our
newest networking project--the use of videoconferencing. The fall
semester of 1991 was the fourth semester that this network was used for
shared instruction among colleges. An instructor teaching from a
classroom with students at their "home college" is seen and heard by
students at other college locations. The ability to share instruction
among colleges eliminates the need to cancel classes because of low
enrollment and enables students at a college to take advantage of
courses that may not be offered at that location.

Strategies for implementing information
technologies

No institution can make the progress Maricopa has made in the
implementation of information technologies without developing strategies
to maximize the internal and external opportunities, and to minimize or
overcome the internal and external obstacles it may face. Three major
strategies which have been identified by Maricopa are: (1) establishment
of a centralized/decentralized technology environment, (2) use of the
Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) for managing the change process,
and (3) creation of partnerships with major technology providers.

     Centralized/decentralized environment

As stated earlier, Maricopa Community College District consists of
eight semi-autonomous colleges and two educational centers along with
the Maricopa County Skill Center. Each of these colleges is accredited
separately by the North Central Accrediting Association, and each has
its own president and administration, faculty senate, curriculum and
degrees, and processes and procedures. The management direction for
information technologies has, therefore, been to follow the overall
management philosophy and give more technology power to the colleges.
Thus, each college has its own dedicated VAX computer and NEAX 2400 PBX
and voicemail system.

Not all aspects of information technology could be decentralized,
however. Standards for the acquisition of hardware and software are
established centrally with the advice and participation of the colleges.
In addition, software and hardware systems that are centrally managed
remain centrally located. The accounting system and human resource
systems are managed by staff located at the district office. The
hardware and software that support these systems, therefore, remain at
the district office. The library system is also centralized so that each
college can take advantage of the districtwide library holdings.

This centralized/decentralized environment is managed through the
use of active user groups for each of the technologies and the
Information Technologies Executive Council (ITEC). The user groups are
composed of representatives from each college and from the appropriate
segments of the district office. Directed by the management of
Information Technologies Services, these user groups make
recommendations regarding policies, procedures, and acquisitions to
ITEC, which reports directly to the chancellor and manages the
information technology function for the entire district. ITEC is
composed of the four vice chancellors for the district, one college
president, a member of the Maricopa Governing Board, one faculty member,
a vice president from Arizona State University, and the Director of
Information Technologies at Phoenix Union High School District. ASU and
PUHSD are non-voting, ex-officio members.

     Concerns-Based Adoption Model

When any new technology is introduced into an organization, its
chance of success is dependent upon the ability of the individuals
introducing the technology to manage the change process. The change
process model used within the Maricopa Community Colleges is the
Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM), developed at the University of
Texas at Austin. This change model postulates that change may be
effectively introduced into an organization only if the members of the
organization understand the vocabulary of the change, understand how the
change will affect their lives, adopt the change within their own
individual work environments, and adapt their activities to accommodate
the new approach.

This is the philosophy upon which Maricopa began the
Telecommunications Improvement Project described earlier. It was the
goal of the telecommunications team to spend adequate amounts of time
before equipment specifications were developed and equipment was
purchased, to ensure that faculty, staff, and administrators were taught
how telecommunications, particularly voice communications, could be used
as a strategic tool to complete their jobs. It was also important that
these groups had input into the type of hardware that was to be
purchased.

Toward this end, one-on-one and small group discussions were held
at each college. Information was disseminated to all employees in both
print and electronic formats. Audio teleconferencing sessions were held
as "open hearings" to give anyone and everyone an opportunity to
contribute to the planning and design effort.

     Partnerships with technology providers

The creation of partnerships with major technology suppliers has
been a deliberate strategy of Maricopa. A three-way partnership among
Digital Equipment Corporation, Information Associates (IA), and Maricopa
began in 1983. Prior to that, there were informal relationships with
these same companies. This partnership brought to Maricopa millions of
dollars in hardware procurement savings from Digital and broad resources
from Information Associates to develop new software packages.

Because of the success of the Digital/IA/Maricopa partnership,
Maricopa entered into another partnership in 1988, with NEC America,
Inc. and NEC Home Electronics (USA), for telecommunications and video
equipment. The goal of this partnership was to advance Maricopa's use of
voice and video communications. The Maricopa/NEC partnership has
resulted in the successful demonstration and implementation of digital
video across the districtwide wide area network and the installation of
new, state-of-the-art video equipment at each of the Maricopa Colleges.
Between 1990 and 1993, this partnership will enable Maricopa to upgrade
its current telephone and voicemail systems at considerable savings to
the colleges.

The newest Maricopa partnership is with The Robinson Group, a newly
formed information access company. The Robinson Group (TRG) and Maricopa
are jointly developing instructional and instructional-support software
along with information access tools and technology.
Maricopa believes that vendor partnerships are not only a form of
creative financing, but also bring additional strength to developmental
efforts. In addition, these partnerships provide some advance knowledge
of future directions, pre-release of products, and a safety net to
protect against possible failures.

Evolution of the IT organization

For the past eight to ten years, technical and management journals
have been filled with articles related to the evolving organizational
structure for information technology organizations. The ongoing
arguments regarding the pros and cons of separate or combined
administrative and academic computing organizations have been joined
with the arguments for and against combining telecommunications and
computing into a single organizational structure. If combined, which
receives "top billing"; if separate, how do the two relate?

Historically, these functions were separate entities within the
Maricopa District. In the late 1970s, computing was all done in a batch
mode and was the domain of Computer Services. There was no such thing as
"data communications" in our vocabulary. Telephone service was monitored
by the purchasing department under the careful eye of AT&T and Mountain
Bell. Television activities belonged in the media services department at
each college.

Beginning in 1983, with the installation of the initial VAX
computers linked with 56 Kbps dedicated telephone lines, computing and
the new area of data communications were joined in a new department
called Management Systems and Computer Services. Telephones were still
not acknowledged as a technology that needed to be managed rather than
simply "acquired," and television was still seen as an extension of the
old classroom film and, therefore, still managed by Media Services.

With the divestiture of AT&T and the Bell System in 1984, the
organizational environment began to change again. Maricopa, like so many
other educational institutions across the country, awoke one morning to
find that there were many new telephone service and equipment providers,
and that the number of new voice technologies being introduced had
multiplied almost overnight. To keep pace with these changes, a new
department of telecommunications was formed. This department was
combined with computing and data communications in 1985 and a new
umbrella organization called Information Technologies Services was born.

Between 1985 and 1990, use of information technologies within the
Maricopa Community Colleges continued to grow and expand. With the
completion of the districtwide microwave network, the lines between
voice, data, and video communications became even more blurred, and
districtwide planning for video communications was finally absorbed into
the Information Technologies Services area.

     Key new job opportunities

The evolution of the information technologies organization has
brought more than mere departmental name changes to Maricopa.
Specifically, this evolution has brought about new job opportunities for
individuals within the district and new challenges for retraining and
staff development. Each of the new job opportunities and all of the
retraining challenges focus on the strategy of integrating voice, data,
and video communications. Key new job opportunities include the
following.

  *  Director of Computing & Communications. This position is
responsible for all day-to-day operations of Information Technologies
Services, including all voice, data, and video communications along with
all software development, applications programming, and library
automation. This position is also responsible for overseeing projects
under development with Maricopa's vendor partners.

  *  Director of Technical Operations. This position is responsible for
the maintenance and operation of the voice, data, and video
communications networks within the Maricopa District and oversees the
technical staff in each of these areas.

  *  Director of Instructional Technology. This position is responsible
for the development of instructional applications using any of
Maricopa's technologies including voice, data, and video. This person
also has primary responsibility for the development and promotion of the
Maricopa Video Conferencing Network.

  *  Manager of Technology Planning. This position is responsible for
the planning that must take place to integrate information technologies
into new and ongoing facility construction and remodeling projects.

  *  Manager of Network Operations. This position has primary
responsibility for the maintenance and operation of the Maricopa wide
area network and local area networks, including fault isolation, fault
resolution, and capacity planning.

  *  Manager of Research and Development. This position is responsible
for researching new technologies and software applications for potential
acquisition and implementation by the Maricopa Community Colleges.

     Retraining and staff development

The challenges of retraining and staff development are many as the
roles of individuals within the organization are forced to change by the
implementation and integration of new information technologies. First,
the staff must be retrained to manage and operate the new technologies.
This retraining can be both expensive and time consuming, particularly
with the more advanced applications or hardware. Second, the staff must
be retrained to work in self-managed teams rather than as individuals.
The integration of technologies into one organizational structure means
that teams must be used to approach and solve problems. Staff who are
unable to work as team members cannot survive in this environment.
Finally, staff must receive additional training in communication skills
and customer service.

Within Maricopa we have found that a majority of the "trouble
calls" we receive in our repair services department are not really
technology-related; they are people-related. In other words, there is
often nothing wrong with the hardware or the software application. What
is really wrong is the way in which the individual is using the hardware
or software, the processes/procedures established by the individual's
department, or the staffing in the individuals work area. Staff of the
Information Technologies Services department must be trained to listen
to the user, to probe to discover the true problems, and to communicate
these issues in a nonthreatening and helpful manner.

Projected areas of growth

The appetite for the acquisition and use of new technologies at
Maricopa seems insatiable. There are many more requests than can be
accommodated within the resources available. This means that we have
ambitious plans for expansion and growth for the upcoming five-to-ten
year period.

In the area of computing and data communications, we plan to expand
our use of local area networks and connection of these networks to the
wide area network. This includes the use of multi-vendor hardware and
software. We also plan to expand access to the network from homes and
business locations through the use of laptop and home computers. We
believe that the affordable laptop computer may be the next major
breakthrough in computing, giving students an opportunity to complete
course work at times and places convenient to them and then to "dock"
with the network to submit the course work, receive new assignments, and
communicate with instructors and other students. We also plan to expand
the ability of faculty, students, and staff to access information in
district databases and in external databases. This will be done through
the use of new types of databases, new graphical user interfaces, and
other new access technologies.

In the area of voice communications, we plan to equip our newest
college with a digital PBX and state-of-the-art voicemail system. The
new voicemail system recently installed at the new District Support
Services Center and the one that will be installed at the new college
location combine traditional voice messaging technology with automated
attendants, call processing, and audiotext and audio forms capabilities.
Through the use of NEC's Open Application Interface, which allows the
PBX owner to customize certain PBX functions, we plan to enhance our
voice communications services to faculty and students and to upgrade the
telephone systems at each college.

Also included in the voice communications plans are expanded
integrated voice response (IVR) applications. Currently, the colleges
are using a touch-tone registration system based upon the technology of
Perception Technology Corporation and IA's Student Information System
(SIS) software. The new IVR technologies which are now available will
enable Maricopa to give students and faculty touch-tone access to many
other types of information and other types of online processes.

In the area of video communications, we plan to expand our use of
the NEC digital video codecs to all locations so that every college will
have the capability of originating and receiving two-way video and audio
communications for shared instruction and meeting purposes. Additional
C/Ku band satellite downlinks will be installed over the next few years
to allow Maricopa to expand its use of satellite-based programming for
ad hoc videoconferencing and instructional support. We believe we will
also see a further integration of computing and video as personal
computers expand their capability of handling video signals.
Finally, the Maricopa wide area network will continue to expand.
Connectivity with local high schools, elementary schools, and four-year
institutions will grow as will access to home and local business sites.
Maricopa is heavily involved in statewide and regional efforts to
connect educational institutions for voice, data, and video
communications, and is among the leaders nationally in the use of
telecommunications to reach international audiences.

Conclusion

In many ways, the Maricopa Community Colleges have demonstrated
exemplary uses of technology to meet the needs of students and staff. In
many ways, there is yet room for improvement. If there is one area,
however, where Maricopa's faculty and staff have excelled, it is in
their combined commitment to not just "do more," but to "be more." If we
can "be more" effective; if we can "be more" productive; if we can "be
more" as part of our community through the creative uses of technology,
we are obligated to work together toward that end. Maricopa's wide area
network is the primary vehicle through which these goals may be
obtained.

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