SOI Asia Project is launched in 2001 by WIDE Project. SOI Asia Project utilizes satellite based Internet to provide Internet environments in a less expensive, easy to deploy, and more feasible way for the universities located in the regions where Internet environments are insufficiently developed; conducts research and development of the necessary technology for IT human resource development in Asia while using the environments; and proposes, through field experiments, a new educational methodology for universities in Japan as well as educational institutions abroad.

As of October 2006, the project has 22 partner universities and research institutes in 12 countries in Asia, and has deployed receive-only satellite earth stations at each partner site to share the distribution of live lectures from various part of the world as well as archived lectures.

Partner Organizations

Course Development Partners

This project is supported by several ministries of Japanese government, and ran mainly by WIDE Project, AI³ Project, Keio University, Asia SEED and JSAT Corp. The official lecture providing partners include Tokyo University of Fisheries and Marine Science, Agricultural Department of Tohoku University, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Keio University, and WIDE Project.

Network and Applications

SOI Asia network has three components: lecturer sites, a gateway site, and student sites. Lecturer sites can be built anywhere as long as the network bandwidth is sufficient to carry lecture video and audio to the gateway site. The gateway site is located in Keio University, Shonan Fujisawa Campus, the location of the AI3 C-band hub station. Students sites are located in Asia, within the footprint of the JCSAT-3 satellite used by AI3 Project.

Student sites have Receive Only earth stations to receive data transmitted to the AI3 Unidirectional Link. These sites also have Internet connections, such as 128kbps leased-line, for the return traffic from the student sites. Using a satellite unidirectional link enable us to deliver good quality video and audio to student sites, while the existing Internet connections enable real-time interactions between lecturers and students. Student sites also have mirror servers so students can watch lecture archives from local servers.

We use DVTS or Polycom to connect a lecturer site to the gateway site, and Windows Media Player or VIC/RAT for delivering classes from the gateway site to student sites. We use various applications such as VIC/RAT, Internet Relay Chat, Bulletin Board, MSN Messenger for the feedback from a student site to the lecturer site. The student site can decide which application they will use based on their Internet infrastructure.

Human Resource Development Programs

We believe that a stable environment management by each local staff with sufficient understanding of the network/distance learning environment configuration and knowledge for network management is indispensable for lecture operations and our project's future development. To meet this, we have organized SOI Asia Operators Workshop since 2002.  We invited about 30 local site operators to the workshops, and teach the basic and advanced knowledge to maintain our system.  In August 2006, SOI Asia organized a Global E-Workshop.  42 operators from 19 organizations in 10 countries participated in the workshop remotely utilizing SOI Asia network and technologies.

We also have “SOI Asia Human Resource Development Program (internship program)” since January 2006 to invite Asian operators to Keio University 3 months for an on-the-job training.

Partnership with Universities and Curriculum

We manage our project through steering committee, which consists of each partner's representative, academic committee and operator committee. In the academic committee, we gather each university's course wish lists, and decide the curriculum. In the year 2005, we conducted marine science, bio-technology, information technology and disaster management courses, which received the most requests from the partner universities.  We are also in the process of constructing a system for grade exchange and review the way of faculty communication and grading for the students. In the steering committee, we established organized partnerships by discussing various processes such as new site approval process.

Past Achievement

Through our project, we already established Internet infrastructure in 21 partners in 11 countries in low cost and short span. Especially in Union of Myanmar, none of the universities have Internet infrastructure in October 2001, when our project had started, and Internet was not managed commercially. However, in those times, we installed Internet connection in University of Computer Science, Yangon, and got special permit from the government to use the Internet connection freely for educational purpose, and established student site environment.

Through our distance learning environment, we have delivered 162 lectures and 16 courses until September 2006.  In these lecture series, there were not only Internet technology related lectures, but also marine science lectures by Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, and Bio-technology lectures by Tohoku University. We confirmed our accumulation of distance learning experience in Internet related lecture can be applied to other courses.

We also confirmed the communication system of student and lecturer through our distance-learning environment; students attend the lecture, students submit the assignments, and lecturer reviews the assignment, can work well to the universities, which have matching interest. Students can specify the lecturer of their interest, and the lecturer could review the abilities of the students. We found our distance learning procedure could be applied to the selection of co-advisors, educational programs such as lectures from joint research partners.

We use our network with partner organizations as a “platform for dialogues” on regional key issues.  We implemented real-time symposium in various topics time to time.  After the Indian Ocean Tsunami, SOI Asia had a special symposium to discuss roles of universities on disaster prevention.  Based on the discussion, SOI Asia presented Tsunami related lectures and invited Syiah Kuala University, Banda Aceh, Indonesia- a university seriously damaged by Tsunami.

Future Works

We will conduct several lecture series with inter-university grade exchanges and verify if our environment is suitable for real university level lecture infrastructure. We will also apply our environment to exchange student programs and twining programs to propose more efficient educational programs.