The summer semester with purely digital courses has started. The technical infrastructure had to be expanded within a very short space of time. A look behind the scenes.
For Oldenburg students, the summer semester 2020 marks a change to their usual study routine. To ensure that the start of online teaching runs as smoothly as possible, the library's media technology, IT services and the university's e-didactics department are working closely together.
Herbert Greis, acting head of IT services, and his team have been working for weeks to adapt the IT infrastructure to the new conditions. With BigBlueButton, they have implemented a conference platform that runs on the university's own servers. In addition to telephone and video conferences, it also enables group chats, collaborative work on notes and screen sharing. Embedding the new system was a significant departure from the Computing Science team's usual approach. "Normally, we would have tested the software over a long period of time with increasing numbers of participants. This step-by-step principle was no longer necessary as the start of the semester drew ever closer. That was a big change for us," says Greis.
More storage space, higher internet performance
The conference system complements communication channels such as email, the Stud.IP campus management system and the university's own cloud. In order to minimise data traffic, lectures should preferably be offered asynchronously. For example, the lecturer records a video at home and makes it available for download in Stud.IP. Smaller seminars, meetings and group work are possible in real time via BigBlueButton; however, in favour of sound and image quality, only lecturers should have their camera and microphone switched on if possible. In order to cope with the enormous flow of data, IT services increased the internet bandwidth in the days before the start of the semester, increased server capacity and activated additional storage capacity for drives and the cloud.
The media technology staff are also fully focussed on online teaching at the moment. Among other things, they take care of the supporting hardware such as microphones and webcams. "We are the point of contact if the sound or image quality is not sufficient and equip university computers with additional technology," says Axel Masemann, Head of Media Technology. Their tasks also include familiarising themselves with the new IT services software in order to be able to deal with requests. In individual cases, media technology even provides support with the recording of lectures - if special equipment and expertise is required for this.
"Not an immediate solution for every problem"
Masemann and his team have been on alert since the lockdown. "We only find out about technical difficulties once the associated virtual meetings have already taken place. We therefore have to respond to enquiries at very short notice," reports Masemann. "What's more, webcams and headsets ordered weeks ago are currently not being delivered in the agreed quantities due to the high demand," he says. It will therefore take some time before the media technology department can provide new equipment.
Greis also asks for a little patience: "We are also facing new challenges in the current situation. Some processes will first have to familiarise themselves. We are working hard to ensure that everything runs as smoothly as possible, but unfortunately there won't be an immediate solution to every problem." Nevertheless: "So far, all processes are working reliably. The feedback from the Schools has also been good. We are naturally very pleased about this."
