1. HAS THE TIME COME FOR USING VIDEO-BASED LECTURES OVER THE INTERNET? A TEST-CASE Marco Ronchetti Dipartim. Informatica e Telecomunicazioni Università di Trento Italy

2. Traditional lecturing through the Web Traditional lecturing is dead.  The lecture model is under attack by people proposing learner centered learning  E-learning is an opportunity for a change  However…

3. Traditional lecturing through the Web … what is going on in your classroom? At our place, we use a blended approach, much stuff is available through the net, but the classroom is still there… Can we make it any better, while the old paradigm still survives?

4. Breaking the space-temporal unit Can we free the student from spatial and temporal constraints? Classical solutions:  Paper-based learning material  VHS cassettes (and TV or satellite broadcasting) Video distribution through the Internet was not feasible (at least in Europe) until recently

5. Today… Connections available to our students:  77% standard 56K analog modem  22% some kind of fast connection 7% ISDN (128:256 K) 15% ADSL (256K) (growing very FAST!)  1% no connection at all. (but some of the students with slow connection have friends with ADSL)

6. Our requirements  the system should support both synchronous and asynchronous modes through the web;  synchronous mode should allow at least some degree of interaction;  the lectures should be easily browsed, with some form of indexing and a direct access to any time-location in the lecture;

7. Our requirements  lectures should be available (in some form) also to students who do not have a large band Internet connection;  lectures should be visible on all major platforms (Windows/Linux/Macintosh)  production costs should be minimal, so as to allow scaling the approach to most courses.

8. The solution: e-Presence The system you’re seeing now: e-Presence, a system originally designed for webcasting seminars, developed by Prof. Ron.Baecker and Dr. Gale Moore’s group at the Knowledge Media Design Institute University of Toronto (http://epresence.kmdi.toronto.edu, refs. in the paper)

9. Logical Architecture Synchronous (webcast) Asynchronous (On line, or download) Asynchronous(CD)

10. e-Presence cognitive interface  The main focus is on the projected slide,  a clear voice is very important,  the video carries additional information like gestures, and can show the environment just enough  Navigation is possible  Interaction is possible

11. e-Presence: look and feel Video Slide projected in classroom List of slides (titles) Buttons for navigating the slides Time axis for the navigation The “Webcast” version has a chatline to put questions Title

12. Our experiment We used e-presence on a whole first- year course (48 hours, Object Oriented Programming for Computer Science)  through the Internet (webcasting)  through the Internet (asynchronous)  through the Internet (download)  offline (through a set of CDs).

13. Objectives  to evaluate the organizational costs of the initiative, and find out what the ratio costs/benefits is;  to evaluate on the field the use of multimedia in general, and of the e-presence technology in particular;  to measure the student’s satisfaction level;  to gather experience that can be precious in a possible extensive use of this technology;  to get new ideas about possible extensions of the technology or of its use.

14. Student feedback Enthusiastic. We were “forced” to extend the experiment to a second course! 75% anticipated using the system often or very often At examination time:  50% of the regular students had used the system to review at least one lecture.  5% of the students had followed the course completely off-line (working students)

15. Student feedback Enthusiastic. We were “forced” to extend the experiment to a second course! students who…1 st exam2 nd examtotal …used the system to review at least one lecture 50%90%66% …followed the course completely off-line 5% 75% anticipated using the system often or very often

16. Advantages from student’s perspective  Better time management: ability to recover lectures lost due to forced absence (illness, work or other time-frame incompatibility); ability to better organize their time, deciding not to be present at some lecture (elective absence);  Better understanding review some critical point (cases of poor understanding of a section due to concentration drop, excessive speed in an explanation or intrinsic difficulty); ability to check the correctness of notes taken during a lecture;

17. Other advantages  Miscellaneous perception by the student of a better service provided by the university; support foreign students who might have difficulties with the (Italian) language; enrichment of the e-learning portfolio; possibility for the teacher to view himself; possibility to reuse lectures (across time, or in different contexts!)

18. Assessing costs: initial costs <$10.000  Software acquisition e-presence (contact KMDI) Quick time professional ($ 60) Real (Helix) Server ($ 2000)  Hardware acquisition 3 fast PC’s ($2000 each)  1 Web & Real Server machine  1 Acquisition Machine (with video acquisition card)  1 Webcast Machine (with video acquisition card), optional 1 (or more) Digital Camera ($500) Optional video mixer

19. Assessing costs: running costs  setting up the system before lectures (10 min.)  running the system during the lecture (2 hours)  removing the system after lectures (10 minutes)  starting the post-processing: half an hour. The post processing would than go by itself for approx. 3 hours for producing 3 streams of 2 hours each  ending the post-processing (uploading the video on the web site, producing the master CD): half an hour. => 1.65 hour work per 1 hour lecture The total work for a 45-hour course was approximately 80 hours.

20. Conclusion: the past  We have explored the possibility of breaking the space-time constraints of the traditional classroom, using a software produced by the University of Toronto.  Student feedback was enthusiastic,  Costs are sustainable and scale well

21. Conclusion: the future  Extensive use: We plan using the system systematically on courses attended by a large number of students (100) We are having many requests by other people  Further developments We have some suggestions to KMDI to improve their excellent system KMDI plans of putting e-presence in the open-source/public-domain