Posted by Douglas Fisher on Friday, August 29, 2014 in News.

This is a guest post by Doug Fisher, Faculty Director of Warren College.

Last night at dinner time, a group of College Halls student and faculty staff gave a brief tour of the Kissam Center and Warren/Moore Colleges to a group of about 15 visitors from University College of the University of Melbourne. Students on their way to the football game (despite the torrential downpour!) and eating in Kissam greeted our visitors with friendly hellos, broad smiles, and chit chat. We started the tour in the Moore Faculty Director office, and ended up in the Delbrück living room, where we talked about the future and said goodbye to them before they vanished in an instant. Our tour had been by Skype, facilitated by my laptop. The decision to take the tour was spontaneous, intended to wake all of us to the affective possibilities of live communication between students around the world.

For a couple of months now, Warren and Moore colleges of Vanderbilt University (WMV: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/collegehalls/), and University College of the University of Melbourne (UCM: http://www.unicol.unimelb.edu.au), have been exploring the possibility of establishing a live feed between common areas of the two complexes — one at WMV and one at UCM. At a minimum, this interactive portal would enable students at the two locations to talk to and see each other in real time. The portal would be implemented by installing two “large” interactive displays at each location, each outfitted with camera and mic, so that students could walk up and talk to students at the other location. The display might support other functionality too, perhaps allowing students to share content, such as student produced visual art. A location of the interactive display at the Vanderbilt site has been tentatively determined. This picture, taken before the start of classes, shows the view of the WMV space (minus the people) that Melbourne students would see.

WMV Center: The location is along a major thoroughfare for student traffic, but there is also ample space for students to step out of traffic to converse with students at UCM.

The interactive portal might only be active for selected hours, perhaps to synch up WMV’s evenings with UCM’s mornings (the next day) and vice versa (UCM is 15 hours ahead of WMV). Alternatively, the feed might be active continuously.
Faculty, student, and staff leaders at the WMV and UCM are interested to see whether the interactive portal encourages broader collaborations and friendships among students at the two institutions. Indeed, the interactive portal is viewed as a “flagship” project that helps establish a larger culture of connectedness between UCM and WMV. In addition to the individual collaborations and friendships for example, formal interactions among college community members would be encouraged. For example, when discussions on important topics are hosted at faculty apartments of WMV, participating WMV students and faculty can host UCM students and faculty through Web-based video conferencing (e.g., skype) on their laptops (literally, perhaps, on the laps of WMV participants facing outward towards the larger group on site at WMV). These UCM students, visible and audible to the WMV group, would then be active participants in the WVM/UCM discussion. We imagine many possible kinds of connections between UCM and WMV.

Again, we are currently in an exploration phase. Our next step is to bring students more actively into the conversation and planning, to get their ideas on the possibilities for the interactive portal project specifically, and for a richer connectedness between WMV and UCM, generally. Last night’s meeting was just a start, and despite the imperfections of the video and audio feeds, was still a great success in convincing us that live community talk around the globe is within easy grasp, even as part of our day to day routines.

*Doug Fisher is Faculty Director of Warren College.

**This guest post reflects Doug’s opinions, and not necessarily those of Vanderbilt University.