Viability, Sustainability, Scalability and Pedagogy: Investigating the Spread of Real-time, Rich Media Technologies in Australian Universities

In a two year project called the Leading Rich Media project, the implementation of rich media technologies in Australian universities was investigated from the standpoints of viability, sustainability, scalability and pedagogy. Over half of all universities responded with several respondents from each institution providing rich data concerning how implementation is planned, funded, maintained and administered. The silences in the investigation were interesting, with the project team discovering a surprising lack of current scholarly publications available to inform their work. Other silences in the data led them to conclude that there is a policy and strategic planning void in many institutions which could threaten best use of emerging rich media technologies such as desktop videoconferencing and other synchronous communications technologies.