Social and cultural developments constantly shape the way information technology evolves. Researchers tell us that consumers generate hundreds of exabytes of information annually in the form of audio, video, and photos. Generation Y is one of the driving forces behind this rich media explosion: Its members are making unprecedented demands on the information infrastructures of today, and they will certainly make more demands tomorrow.

Digital media usage in a higher-ed setting provides a clue to what enterprise CIOs will face in the future. Students today are being educated in an environment in which they are accustomed to producing and using resource-taxing, rich digital media, and they will continue to generate and interact with digital media after graduation.

At Salisbury, students' adoption of everything from podcasting to YouTube has changed the way my staff supports the student body and has created new challenges to our information technology resources.

Increasing the size of our internet connection

Digital media files are generally quite large. Because of their size, they can consume quite a bit of the network resources. This affects our traffic at the Internet connection point, but it also can affect the internal network. As the types of data files have grown more diverse and the use of the Internet has increased over the past few years, we have had to increase the size of our connection to the Internet. In 2000, we had two T1 lines to make the connection (3 MB total). Today, we have two OC-3 lines (310 MB), an increase of more than 10,000%. We are now redesigning our network architecture to provide as open a route to the Internet as possible, while protecting our campus databases.

In order to control media traffic on the network, we have been using a packet shaper device to limit certain types of media traffic. We can set very low limits on this type of traffic, which keeps it from overtaking the network. This has worked well, but the environment continues to change. With the advent of Web 2.0 content, we are seeing legitimate and educational uses for this type of media.

Therefore, we need to use new tools to discern which media types are desirable and which are not. We are also evaluating tools that will allow us to monitor network traffic files and determine how our network is being used at a granular level. This will enable us to provide the appropriate quality of service to key locations such as the classrooms. It will also enable us to ward off attacks and other intrusions that affect performance.

We anticipate an even faster pace of change in the near future. The university is actively promoting interdisciplinary programs and facilities that are producing unprecedented amounts of digital media. Traditional courses featured three or four hours of classroom sessions per week. Today, a significant number of course offerings—more than 500 in our most recent semester—have Web components that require students to spend two hours in the classroom and another one or two hours reviewing supplemental digital content served by the university's information infrastructure. That content ranges from audio lectures to Web presentations to interactive video.

Our changing learning environments

Our classroom infrastructure has changed as a result of growing digital media usage. In 1998, Salisbury University had just four "smart" classrooms that featured Internet connectivity and computer projection systems. Our campus now has more than 120 such rooms, and these features are being built right into some of our most important new facilities' classrooms.

Outside the classroom, increasingly popular distance education requires IP-based teleconferencing. With Alcatel's help, we are exploring synchronous and asynchronous videoconferencing for lecturers who are putting presentations online.

Media produced by the creative arts disciplines have been particularly challenging for us to support. Art students are creating and applying designs that may appear on digital film, websites, DVDs, CDs, and other media. Aspiring filmmakers are writing, directing, and producing complete video productions on campus. Music students are creating and integrating compositions digitally.

In response, we're building an information infrastructure that would be as well-suited in Hollywood as it is on a university campus. By 2008, Salisbury will have a 20,000-square-foot Integrated Media Center, which will include a 3,000-squarefoot high-definition video studio, music recording studio, video and audio editing facilities, a digital integration lab, a digital photography lab, and an electronic art gallery, as well as multimedia classrooms where students will interact with digital media.

The new center will emphasize collaborative technology to allow students and faculty from diverse university programs to work together on projects involving digital media. Students from the art, music, video production, theater, dance, education, and other academic programs will apply the theory and principles of their disciplines to develop a variety of digital media products.

The challenges presented by this shift to collaborative, integrated digital media are welcome. After all, I am an educator first and a technology professional second. As digital media becomes integral to more and more academic disciplines, the skill sets gained by working with it will be of great career value to graduates in almost any field. In particular, those who pursue careers in fields such as biotech or information technology will find themselves better equipped to exploit the ever-evolving world of rich digital media.

The greater impact on the IT discipline is profound. As our future doctors, lawyers, and creative professionals get even more accustomed to the availability of these rich media resources, our staff and budgets need to be equally equipped to ensure that the IT infrastructures for tomorrow's generation are being planned for and built today.