The University of Winnipeg, Concordia University in Montreal, and the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology all use technology from Cisco Systems, whether for videoconferencing, call centers, or Wi-Fi.

The University of Winnipeg recently announced that it is the first university in Canada to deploy Cisco’s TelePresence technology. With financial assistance from the federal and provincial governments, the U of W aims to become a hub for a provincial network of future TelePresence sites at the University of Brandon and the University College of the North.

“We are just setting up the TelePresence at this point,” Richard Nakoneczny, the U of W’s COO tells Telemanagement. “The hub equipment is on the way, and the rooms are being certified. We have the Cisco TelePresence System 3200, the 18-seater, which will follow on later this summer with one of the eight seat units. We are also getting two or three of the smaller one- and two-person rooms.”

The idea is for the U of W to become a hub for a provincial network of TelePresence sites. Efforts are also underway to extend the TelePresence network to include a node in Ottawa. Investment by the Governments of Canada and Manitoba is being made through the Canada-Manitoba Western Economic Partnership Agreement (WEPA). One TelePresence endpoint will be based in the U of W’s new Science Complex, at Richardson College for the Environment. The second will be located inside the U of W's Faculty of Business and Economics in a new building opening in fall 2010.

“It extends the reach of the University because we are now able to collaborate more effectively with other universities in Manitoba,” says Nakoneczny. “We have the large 3200s at the University of Brandon and at Las Pas in the north – this creates a three way partnership to offer courses jointly, and for professors to work collaboratively on projects. As well, the Province of Manitoba has an office in Ottawa, and with a node there we can help them reduce travel costs.”

Part of the focus is to enable The U of W's environmental science program to increase research on “green” technology and expand its collaboration with industry, leading to more business opportunities.

NAIT takes the call

Located in Edmonton, Alberta, the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) is one of the largest institutes of technology in Canada. NAIT offers over than 250 programs (including 35 apprenticeship trades) leading to certificates, diplomas and applied degrees and over 1,400 continuing education courses. NAIT serves more than 84,400 customers each year, both on campus and through distance learning.

“We have always had a Cisco network,” says Mary Hauge, Manager of Service Bureau, IT Department. “We started in IP telephony very early – about six years ago – and now plan to migrate fully.”

NAIT operates out of a main campus, two remote campuses for apprenticeship training, and an entrepreneur centre. IP telephony and wireless capabilities are being added with new infrastructure investments, but some of the most impressive innovation has been on the contact centre side.

“Our contact centre is all in house,” says Kam Gill, NAIT’s manager of the Student Success Contact Centre, “We had a vision of a one stop shop, without calls being passed from one department to another. We have 14 people on the phone. These aren’t entry level positions. It’s very knowledge specific and specialized – I can’t see how it could be outsourced without affecting quality.”

NAIT uses Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise (UCCE), Cisco Unified Intelligent Contact Management (ICM) Enterprise, Cisco Agent Desktop/Cisco Supervisor Desktop (CAD/CSD), as well as Cisco Interaction Manager (CIM) for e-mail interaction and web interaction.

“This is a shared service with an overflow model,” says Karen MacDonald, NAIT’s Application Services Team Leader, Service Bureau. “We have the 14 agents and one supervisor in the Student Success Contact Center, but there are other NAIT contact centers which can take overflow calls such as the Registrar’s Office and elsewhere.”

With increased visibility NAIT can track back-logs and put on additional resources if needed.

“The Cisco system does a good job of letting us know how many people are logged in,” says MacDonald. “For example, we saw a back-log this morning, asked for additional resources, and brought wait times down form six minutes to one minute.”

Students can web chat directly, and can transfer the chat to different departments or escalate to the Registrar’s Office. But the focus is primarily on getting resolution early with well qualified employees.

“When we set up this contact centre we got the best of the best,” says Gill. “These are people with many years’ experience. We don’t just transfer people; we try and deal with it right there.”

Students demand wireless

“Our campus is pretty well saturated with Wi-Fi,” says Nakoneczny from the U of W. “We are fortunate in that we have a four block campus, so it’s easy for us to put in Wi-Fi access points. We have been surprised at the growth rate of wireless access – kids simply demand it.”

At NAIT, about 70% of the overall campus footprint is covered with commercial grade Cisco access points. The U of W is in “very early” discussions with Winnipeg Transit to get Wi-Fi on buses, something that Concordia University in Montreal has already done with the shuttle between its two campuses: one on the West Island, and the other downtown. Concordia also used Cisco gear, this time to converge data and voice on the same IP network to cover continuous wireless access on transit, in classrooms, and in coffee shops and other public areas.

“You have to keep up,” says Andrew McAusland, Associate VP, Instructional and Information Technology, Services, Concordia, noting that a university has “a constantly changing client base.”

Concordia University was the first to install a 802.11n wireless network on a Canadian college campus, incorporating it as part of a larger indoor-outdoor wireless mobility infrastructure. The University deployed Canada's first wireless local-area network in 2001, and in 2003 it was the country's first higher-education institution to roll out Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) across a wireless infrastructure.

Concordia has since enhanced its indoor wireless network with Wi-Fi-certified 802.11n Aironet 1250 Series Access Points, and is managing a first-of-its-kind service-oriented outdoor mesh network that offers mobile phone and data storage services.

"Our IT organization serves as a service provider, a storage provider, a software provider, and more. We make a conscientious effort to provide our students with advanced services,” says McAusland, adding that the combination of 802.11n wireless networking, VoIP over WLAN, outdoor mesh and mobile collaboration technologies reflects this vision.

Education everywhere, anytime

When Nakoneczny from the University of Winnipeg was looking at video conferencing solutions, the ability to provide an “immersive” experience was crucial. No student wants to feel that he or she is somehow second rate, and a good quality experience can put them close to an equal footing to those students who are in the lecture theatre. But video has other advantages beyond a convincing distance learning experience, among them archiving and mobile access.

“One of the things that we liked about the technology was the use of studios to create video on demand course,” says Nakoneczny. “We have better and additional facilities to record lectures with slides, presentations, documents, and 3D imaging. The Cisco Media Center configuration gives us the ability to make that experience available to remote sites.”

Nakoneczny adds that this includes accessing media on BlackBerrys or iPhones, and that the system gives students the ability to get information “where and when they need it, without being in the classroom all the time.” This demand is augmented by the fact that the U of W has many part-time students who benefit from the flexibility that these technologies enable. With NAIT, too, flexibility means that call centre resources don’t have to be sitting in the same room all the time.

“We are looking at remote stations for agents,” says Mary Hauge. “The technology keeps evolving, but we are impressed by the high availability, and how we can leverage the capabilities.”