1) Present
University of Edinburgh (JCMB):
Charles Duncan - Remote Sensing                    Jean Ritchie - UMI Coordinator
Martin Morrey - Remote Sensing                     Kim Underwood - UMI Administrator

University of Paisley
Iain Maclaren - Remote Sensing                       Patrick Walder - Remote Sensing
John McQuillan - Remote Sensing

University of Dundee
Gwen Bayne - Remote Sensing

University of Strathclyde
Lorna Campbell - CVU                                   Dave Whittington - CVU
David McNicol - CVU

University of St Andrews
Martin Bramley - FINESSE

2. Report from Jean Ritchie
2.1 JR has spoken to Paul Clark (SHEFC) who is willing to attend a UMI meeting. As yet, no date has been fixed.

2.2 JR spoke at a MAN awareness day recently, organised by TALiSMAN, and discovered that many people are still not aware that teaching materials are available to them via the web.

2.3 JR recently attended UKERNA's NetWorkshop conference which was attended by network managers throughout the UK. A brief report follows:

2.3.1 JR met with representatives from other MANs. Scotland is envied because of the way that SHEFC made the infrastructure of the MANs possible, then funded videoconference facilities and projects to make use of the MANs. In England, there is no initiative which targets use of MANs specifically. She can provide contacts with the English MANs.

2.3.2 Microwave is being used to provide networking; the NorMAN in the north east of England will make extensive use of microwave which can link sites 50km apart. These will operate at 155Mbps.

2.3.3 Powerline, the technology patented by Norweb which delivers data down the electricity power line, is now being marketed in the north of England.

2.3.4 There was a suggestion that Medical Schools should share experiences on their use of MANs. JR will speak to the Child Health MediCAL project about this.
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2.3.5 JR made a note to include a copyright notice on the UMI web page.
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2.3.6 Malcom Read of the JISC spoke about funding of the network and explained that "charging would be used wherever demand exceeded the funded capacity to supply". He also spoke about network resilience, an important factor now that HEIs are beginning to rely heavily on networks. Different lines need to be in different trenches if they are to be truly resilient; this costs a lot.

2.3.7 Charging for transatlantic traffic will start this August. Charging for other forms of network usage could well follow at a later date. Mechanisms for measuring network usage were discussed; packets can be counted per user, per machine, per protocol. HEIs can specify how they want their bills itemised.

2.3.8 The UK National JANET Web Caching Service will be one way to reduce traffic costs. This cache service is no longer associated with HENSA; it is at a different physical location (Universities of Manchester and Loughborough) and started in 1997. It is likely that sites, or MANs, will connect to the JANET cache; individuals will connect to their site, or MAN, cache. Access to the UK National JANET Web Caching Service will be free.

2.3.9 Jeremy Sharp spoke about UKERNA's videoconference policy. Scotland's set-up is recognised as being successful and UKERNA's goal is to provide similar videoconference services for the rest of the UK.

2.3.10 People are starting to look at desktop videoconferencing over LANs and SuperJANET. LiveLAN and NetMeeting both conform to the H.232 standard, and will interwork. Only point to point conferences had been studied.

2.3.11 MPEG-2 is the technology of the future for digital video broadcasts.

Comments: LC mentioned that point-to-point cross-platform desktop videoconferencing has been done between University of Strathclyde and Glasgow School of Art.

It was pointed out that the quality of the cameras and microphones used, and the connection to the MAN, were very important factors in the success of this desktop videoconference.

Students had also reported successful 3-way audio conferencing using NetMeeting. However, sound switching is necessary with NetMeeting.

3. Reports from UMI 2 projects
3.1 FINESSE
MB: The FINESSE project is on schedule. They are using Mbone tools under Windows 95. FINESSE will be going on line soon with their "Business Portfolio Management System" which will allow students to manage their own portfolio. This is currently run on a unix machine, and accessed via Netscape. They have avoided using Java because it does not operate cross-platform; instead they have used cgi scripts and TCL.

Approximately 20 students will use the system initially but it is flexible, and can take over 200 students.

MB did not know about the umi-info mailing list. JR will email MB the details.
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No one from Child Health MediCAL, SUMSMAN or MANTCHI attended this meeting. CVU and Remote Sensing had nothing new to report from last fortnights meeting.

4. Computer Mediated Communications
4.1 DMcN at Strathclyde spoke about what CVU has been doing in relation to CMC.

CVU are interested in developing a web-based asynchronous discussion system with an educational emphasis. Among other things, they are currently looking at:

1. registration - presently, they have no way of telling what level people are at etc., and
2. being able to support uploading documents and images, and to draw eg. using Java applets to facilitate the drawing of chemical structures.

CVU currently uses Hypernews and BSCW and DMcN asked if anyone had any comments on their experiences of using First Class and Lotus Notes. JR has not used First Class herself but has heard good reports from people who have. LC mentioned having seen a demonstration of First Class which showed that students were more likely to use the system if they had access to a private students discussion area. However, whether the students use this service for discussion relating to their course, or for discussion relating to their social life is not known.

LC then spoke about ways of getting students to actually use a discussion system, including informing students of how the system works, and access to the system. CD pointed out that students may not be able to see the advantages of such a discussion system, and need to be told/shown how to use it to their advantage.

LC then spoke about the proposed set-up of the Social Work course they are working on. The course will be divided in to three sections:

1. Discussion List with online archive
2. Virtual community and case studies
3. Encyclopaedia

The mailing list will be edited and archived and added to the Encyclopaedia at the end of each year. A new discussion will start each year and hopefully, the case studies will help seed the discussion.

It was generally agreed that discussions needed to be seeded, ie that academic staff using electronic tools needed to lead the discussion in the same way that they might lead a face-to-face tutorial. They might need to make provocative statements, or provide some information and ask for comments.

5. Discussion of proposed actions from last fortnights meeting
Outstanding actions are:

5.1 JR had not yet asked Brian Kelly to speak at a UMI meeting.

5.52 JR and KU are in the process of finding out why not all projects have been attending fortnightly Monday morning UMI meetings.

6. Discussion of future UMI meetings
6.1 JR will ask Brian Kelly to speak at the meeting on 27th April. Jean will ask umi-info for suggestions on what BK should talk about.
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6.2 If BK can't come on 27th April, the next meeting will focus on Java, including discussion of it not being useable over all platforms.

6.3 JR will let more UMI people know about the umi-info@mailbase list and how to join. Information on this list and instructions on how to join can be found at www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/umi-info.
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6.4 MM mentioned that Remote Sensing are currently working on improving their registration system and would like to have a look at the work CVU has been doing on this. CVU spoke of problems they've had with Internet Explorer remembering user ID and password and how they are now concentrating on using Java servlets to deal with ID. MM suggested that a future meeting focus on user registration, user authentication, and tracking. DW suggested getting someone from ATHENS (authentication service) to speak at a future meeting. JR will look into this. The ATHENS web page can be found at www.athens.ac.uk. 
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7. AOB
7.1 JR mentioned that CD had previously enquired as to whether there are any papers published on videoconferencing and MANs in Scotland. The answer is no, there aren't. JR will talk to George Howat about the possibility of writing a paper together.
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7.2 A paper written by CVU would soon appear in _Computers and Education_; it mentions the set-up of the Scottish MANs but not in great detail, and with no mention of the videoconference facilities. DW also mentioned a paper which appeared in _Active Learning_, on the ICON project, which briefly covers Desktop videoconferencing. DW suggested that the umi-info archives should include a list of paper references. JR will ask UMI people for details of any relevant papers they are aware of, and this information will be collated and put on the umi-info and UMI web pages.
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