WiredRed’s e/pop Web Conferencing Links up the University of Birmingham

With more than 9,000 new students every year, the University of Birmingham is a leading research university that continues to make groundbreaking progress in industry areas such as gene structure, medicine, space research and communications.

The University is renowned for its diverse and stimulating learning community and offers one of the widest ranges of courses of any institution with nearly 500 graduate programs and more than 320 postgraduate-taught programs.

At the beginning of 2005, the University of Birmingham looked into advancing its eLearning department by deploying new software in an attempt to further the skills of both the lecturers and students seeking to communicate in a more contemporary way.

The University sought a web conferencing solution that would enable the lecturers and students to share applications and data using their existing PCs. The University also required a piece of software that could be installed with minimal effort and training.

The University of Birmingham discovered WiredRed’s e/pop Web Conferencing software and decided to utilise a nine-month pilot scheme as a means to decide whether the software was accessible enough and could meet the University’s needs.

WiredRed’s e/pop software enabled the new users to conduct online meetings and lectures via the means of web conferencing. From their individual PCs, users of e/pop found that they could utilise built-in VoIP to communicate and simultaneously share video, applications, documents and web browsers in real-time.

e/pop Web Conferencing is designed to enhance relations in both education and business and to easily communicate complex topics and eliminate unnecessary travel – whether just down the corridor or halfway around the world. Using voice and video IP, its users can partake in real-time collaboration, sharing information whether it be in the form of a document, application or presentation.

After trialing e/pop software, Birmingham University was so impressed with the capabilities of the solution that the eLearning department decided to make the service fully available by adopting a full 100-user license.

“e/pop is now being used throughout the University as a method for lecturers and pupils to interact and share ideas between computers in any location.”

Stephen Clarke, Head of eLearning, University of Birmingham
“e/pop introduces new learning opportunities for our students, increasing the range of pedagogic tools and techniques that are used to facilitate learning at the University,” comments Clarke. “e/pop is now being used throughout the University, primarily within the campus as a method for lecturers and pupils to interact – sharing applications and data – therefore also sharing ideas between computers in any location.”

e/pop has saved the University substantial costs in installation, training and call costs that it would have spent with other systems available on the market. “By installing e/pop real-time communication software, Birmingham University has avoided the need to deploy more expensive and less flexible hardware solutions,” explains Clarke. “We expect the full benefits of e/pop to be realised over the next two to three years as users start to embed its use within their normal activity.”

“The University of Birmingham is a great example of an institution that is attempting to advance itself by utilising new technology in the education space,” says WiredRed UK, Managing Director Tom Sloan. “Solutions such as web and video conferencing are not only beneficial in delivering efficient and cost effective communications, regardless of the user’s location, but also as a way of augmenting the pupils’ skills by using the most innovative technology on the market as an everyday tool.”

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