Distance Education and Videoconferencing Facilities

IU South Bend maintains outstanding facilities for both distance education instruction and videoconferencing. These facilities are available for scheduled classes and university-sponsored events. For more on these rooms, see details about the Distance Education Classroom.

Three basic systems are in operation:

• VIC (Virtual Indiana Campus). This system consists of four separate facilities at IU South Bend and Elkhart Off-Campus Programs, each of which link with the seven other Indiana University campuses.
• IHETS (Indiana Higher Education Telecommunications System). This system has been in place since the 1960's and has one-way video and two-way audio. Although at Indiana University IHETS is rapidly being replaced by VIC, IHETS remains the only system in the state that links most colleges and universities, medical and industrial sites, and high schools and middle schools.
• Athena. This system is occasionally used to link distance education courses with sites not connected by VIC or IHETS.

Satellite Downlink Programming

There is no charge to IU South Bend departments or organizations to downlink, but some programs may require a license fee. This is the responsibility of the requesting department or organization.