I am situated on a smaller, remote campus that is part of a six-campus system. Our main campus is approximately 90 minutes away, and the farthest campus from us is about 2 hours. We have been using room-based videoconferencing for participation in meetings and course delivery for nearly 20 years. Over the years, costs have decreased, and quality and performance have increased. We have more facilities now to support remote participation and remote delivery, and have increased the venues in which we use it.
I refer to tele-presence not as the specific life-size videoconferencing equipment, but as participating in a meeting or activity remotely while physically separated from the event. Remote consciousness, or remote cognizance, as it could also be considered. Marshall McLuhan in Understanding Media would see this as a natural extension of our senses and consciousness through technology.
This technology is incredibly enabling, and in my current environment, still underutilized.
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