Cdigix at Yale Chuck Powell Director, Academic Media & Technology, ITS Yale University September 15, 2004 Copyright Charles Powell This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.

2 What We Set Out to Do First, to determine whether Cdigix could add value to the process of delivering educational materials to students over the campus network (primarily video). Several units on campus, including ITS, were already performing this function (for example classes.yale.edu) but the goal was to make it easier and more cost effective for the institution. Second, to provide optional subscription entertainment services to students (and faculty and staff as appropriate). This would include both music and video offerings. This part of the pilot would gauge student response to the service both at the technical level and for general sufficiency.

3 Why These Goals? Internal initiative for efficiency on the educational side – deliver more media at a lower unit cost, make the process a simple turnkey process for faculty –Reduce demand for traditional media delivery methods such as the evening screening –Meet growing demands for media usage and teaching benefits Secondary benefit of encouraging students to do the right thing with regards to intellectual property and test whether “you can compete with free” –Immature market and models but important to test –Test needs to reflect behavior -- not just what students say they would do –Avoid equity and distribution challenges in a heterogeneous population

4 Key Features Educational services had to be available to all students, entertainment services should be available to all Easy for faculty to make use of the service Lots of options for students to choose from: –Opt in –Catalog size –Subscribe and/or permanent “buy” Tight integration with campus infrastructure for authentication, authorization, privacy, and course rosters Preserve campus internet connection bandwidth

5 Some Details -- Technology Cdigix is integrated with Yale’s Central Authentication System ( Shibboleth will also be an option Ecommerce costs are non-trivial over a large number of transactions and we’re still working the details between us and the vendor Cdigix servers are in our machine room(s) but solely owned, operated and serviced by Cdigix The Ctrax service is provided straight through the browser (MSIE only) with no client side software other than plug-ins. Music is played via Windows Media Player [DRM constraint] Educational services (Clabs) are delivered via any modern browser and Realplayer to Windows, Mac and soon Unix/Linux. Local feeds from Banner and our course management system to keep course rosters for access synched. Clabs currently has no “catalog” of educational materials we provide the materials locally from the Film Study Center or Library

6 Some Details -- Financial Services (educational and entertainment) are separately priced Music monthly subscription cost = $2.95 Music permanent download = $.89 Movie monthly subscription = $12.95 Movie pay per view $1.99 to $3.99 Educational services paid for out of “my” GA budget so no cost to students and faculty. –Exact cost under non-disclosure –We’re satisfied that it’s cheaper than I can buy the hardware, software and staff it myself

7 Some Details -- Usage Clabs service used by ~50 faculty & ~700 students last semester Over 500 hours of material Estimate is we’ll double that this semester Video entertainment (Cflix) content has been limited so far leading to low usage Music service (Ctrax) has only low usage to date

8 Outcomes Students and faculty have been very receptive to the educational components Several faculty have provided strong anecdotal evidence of the value to teaching and learning Students appreciate the “ease of use” and the asynchronous & ubiquitous nature of the service. It’s bound neither by traditional hours nor traditional network topology Biggest complaints and service issues to date: –Lack of Mac support (we believe is fixed) –Older computer hardware is challenged in a variety of ways to “keep up” (we provide general purpose computer labs)

9 Compare & Contrast PSU Primary goal = encourage proper behavior with respect to copyright, secondary = programmatic improvements Primarily music Cost to student = $0 Cost to institution = NDA Entertainment use = high Educational use = piloting with two courses Yale Primary goal = programmatic efficiency, secondary = encourage proper behavior with respect to copyright Video and music Cost to student for entertainment Cost to institution = Zero for entertainment & NDA education Entertainment use = low Educational use = full production with more than eighty courses