Virginia Tech Wake Forest University School Of Biomedical Engineering And Sciences: Providing New Tools For A New Program

The Virginia Tech-Wake Forest University School of Biomedical Engineering & Sciences (SBES) was established in 2001 to provide graduate programs and enhance research collaboration between the universities. 1 This school enables students to earn M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Biomedical Engineering, a joint M.D./Ph.D. through the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, and a joint D.V.M./Ph.D. through the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine. Given that students may take face to face classes on either campus or classes via distance learning while residing on their home campus in either Blacksburg or Winston-Salem, new instructional technology solutions and infrastructure are required to support this initiative. A project team, consisting of members from Wake Forest and Virginia Tech, was established to develop this innovative learning environment. A key feature of this learning environment is the ability for the professor to easily interact with students using multiple types of instructional technologies. The use of these technologies is particularly important given the course content from the medical and engineering disciplines. This paper will address network infrastructure solutions and lessons learned from the development of this state-of-the-art distance learning environment.