ITS Graduate Education and Research Services (GEaRS) group has received a ConferenceXP Node Development Opportunity grant from Microsoft Research External Programs. The ConferenceXP research platform offers a group oriented multimedia tele-conferencing framework that enables rich media, multi-group to multi-group collaborative work sessions and learning experiences in and out of the classroom. The reward consists of two Dell Dimension XPS graphics workstations, video conferencing hardware and Microsoft Developer Network subscriptions. The award will extend the GEaRS group's existing investigation into group-to-group tele-collaborative tools, currently focused on the Access Grid (AG) toolkit and supported by GEaRS Access Grid node in room 140 Computer Building.
The grant will allow ConferenceXP to be implemented along side of Access Grid, inSors and Polycom solutions for tele-collaborative research and teaching. In addition to video and voice tele-conferencing, key features of the ITS GEaRS facility include large multimedia displays, desktop application sharing, collaborative scientific visualization, and extensibility into middleware and high performance computing applications.
GEaRS teleconferencing facility is available for use by any faculty who are interested in exploring the potential of rich media telecollaboration in their work, or who have opportunities to work with similarly equipped colleagues at remote institutions. Please contact access-grid@psu.edu with all queries.