UW to host Microsoft collaborative tech center

Computer science is about to get more collaborative at the UW. Microsoft has committed $750,000 to the University during the next three years to develop a Center for Collaborative Technologies.

The focus will be on distance learning technologies and high-tech classrooms.

The announcement was made by Microsoft's External Research and Programs unit at the eighth annual Microsoft Research Faculty Summit July 16.

The unit will dedicate more than $6 million this year to academic research around the country. The UW was chosen over nine other universities that also submitted proposals to host the center.

The schools were asked to write a proposal for a center which would develop and expand Microsoft's current collaborative technology programs already being used in their classrooms.

"The schools were asked to write a proposal, identifying the problems with the technology and how they would work through them," said Jane Prey, a representative of "After evaluation, we picked the University of Washington."

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Microsoft representative

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The center will develop and expand ConferenceXP, a platform program in collaborative technology that "allows

researchers, teachers and students to benefit from real-time research collaboration, wireless-enabled classrooms and highly interactive distance-learning environments," according to a Microsoft press release.

The center will be headed by Richard Anderson, a UW professor of computer science and engineering, who did research work for Microsoft during the first phases of ConferenceXP's development in 2001.

The system has been used in distance learning courses between the UW and Microsoft in the computer science and engineering professional master's program.

In 2004, the University conducted a course between the UW, Microsoft, UC San Diego and UC Berkeley, Anderson said. Th is met the project's initial goal of a four-way course.

With the establishment of the center at the UW, Anderson and other researchers will have access to the program's code base, allowing them to contribute to development and expansion of the program.

"ConferenceXP was developed to be a platform for research on advanced collaborative technology and distance education," Anderson said.

Through the center, Microsoft plans to develop the ConferenceXP platform in areas such as improved security, networking diagnostics and remote conference management.

Tools will be developed, Anderson said, "to support specific educational scenarios, such as a version of the system that will run on a single laptop or tablet PC for recording a lecture for later viewing."

The center hopes to ultimately expand the technology to conduct a series of university level courses internationally. The UW has already seen some of the benefits of collaborative technology on campus.

Ed Lazowska, a CSE professor who has worked with Anderson on the center, has used the ConferenceXP technology to teach a joint graduate course with UC Berkeley and UC San Diego for the past three years.

"This provides a wonderful experience for the students," Lazowska said. "Many of the Berkeley students are public policy students rather than technical students; the discussions are really interesting, and the project team spans all of the campuses. Further, we can attract wonderful guest speakers because they can reach three top CS departments with one visit."

Collaborative technology can eventually reach beyond the classroom as well, Prey said.

"It's collaboration in any scenario," she said. "If we want to have a collaborative design session, what is it about collaborative technology that can allow that to happen without us being face to face? And you can take that out to cross-world collaboration."

By including the UW in the development of ConferenceXP, Microsoft is already starting to reach out to the world.

"One of the goals of the center is to help move ConferenceXP from a project being developed at Microsoft to a broader community-based project," Anderson said.

Microsoft is happy to be working with the University on this project, Prey said.

"They are one of our favorite partners," she said. "The computer science department is obviously really strong. They produce a lot of great students, and their faculty is topnotch, so we're really fortunate to have them so close by."

[HTML_REMOVED] Reach reporter Leah Finn at news@thedaily.washington.edu[HTML_REMOVED]