The Medical University of Southern Africa (Medunsa) has invested R8 million in IT infrastructure to support its distance-learning programme, which is expected to double the university`s student complement over the next few years. The purchase of some of the equipment was made possible through a grant from Thintana, the social development arm of the Telkom, Malaysia Telecom and SBC consortium.
Two Compaq 8-way servers and installation support have been provided by national IT infrastructure company Datacentrix.
Committed to providing scientific and medical tertiary training for students from disadvantaged communities, Medunsa will expand its reach into Southern Africa in November this year when the system goes live. "Apart from installing a Compaq 8-way server to manage all web-based course content, student administration and communication channels, such as fax and e-mail, we had to upgrade our existing administrative systems to cope with the expected increased student volume," says Medunsa IT director Manie Maree.
Medunsa consists of the following - dentistry, medicine, health science, public health, and pharmacy. In addition to its distance-learning programme, Medunsa is planning to enhance the quality of the tuition delivered to its satellite campus in Pietersburg by implementing video streaming and video conferencing to this centre. "The combination of classroom instruction, video conferencing and web-based instruction will comprise high-quality interactive learning for students in that area," says Maree.
The upgraded administrative system will run on the ITS system - a locally developed university administration system that is used by most universities and technikons in South Africa. It provides a complete human resources, academic administration and management information system used by some 500 staff members.
Medunsa is one of the few institutions to run its critical distance-learning and administrative systems on the Intel platform. Maree explains that given the rapid increase in student numbers anticipated from the distance-learning initiative and the university`s tight budgetary constraints, the Intel platform was preferred. "We needed technology that was scalable, cost-effective and also sufficiently flexible to provide for upgrades and enhancements when the need arose. If the university continues to grow as we expect, we foresee ourselves needing extra capacity within the next two years, and considering the money we have already spent, we had to ensure an upgrade path that would protect our existing investment," he continues
As a Microsoft partner, Datacentrix will be responsible for executing the implementation in compliance with Medunsa`s Microsoft Campus Agreement. "For price/performance, the Intel/Microsoft combination is hard to beat," says Datacentrix senior account manager Deon Insel. "Compaq has also proved its reliability in the 8-way domain and we are confident that, with this technology combination, Medunsa will deliver a high-quality uninterrupted service to its distance learners," he emphasises.
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