Media Triggered Collaborative Activities

Aneesha Bakharia, Innovations Officer, Teaching and Learning Support Services (TALSS), Queensland University of Technology [HREF1], Brisbane. Email: a.bakharia@qut.edu.au

Abstract

It is common place for recorded lectures and presentations to be synchronised with their accompanying PowerPoint slides and published to the web. The aim of this research is transform the use of media in online environments form passive to collaborative. Media will be used to trigger activities that enhance reflection, concept checking and critical thinking. This poster explores the technical feasibility of designing an interface that would allow lecturers to add cue points to Adobe Flash video and sequence a range of collaborative activities available within a Learning Management System (LMS). The prototype is implemented in Macromedia Flex and utilises activities from QUT's Online Learning and Teaching (OLT) system [HREF2].

Authoring and Playback Tool Requirements

Online authoring and playback tools are required. Both tools must integrate with QUT's in-house built Online Learning and Teaching (OLT) system. The authoring tool must provide an intuitive interface for adding and associating cue points with an activity such as a Notepad, Discussion Forum, Quiz, Flash Interactive or Chat Session. The Playback tool plays a media file and loads activities as required.

The Authoring tool must allow:

Media files to be uploaded
Users to control the playback of media (eg Play, Pause, Stop, Rewind, Fast Forward, etc)
Users to set cue points
Users to associate activities with cue points and setup activity options
Users to select from either a 3 cell or 2 cell layout

The Playback tool must be able to:

Capture cue point events while media is being played
Pause the media when a cue point is triggered and load the specified collaborative or individual activity
Tracking user activity and send this information back to a Learning Management System (LMS)
Publish recent activity and discussions as an RSS feed

Technology Selection

Cue points or markers can be inserted into Adobe Flash video files. This feature has been available since Adobe Flash MX 2004 was released. Adobe Flex 2 [HREF3], which is currently in beta, and uses ActionScript 3, allows cue points to be dynamically added to a Flash video file. Utilising Adobe Flex and using Flash Video as the media format will allow both the Authoring and Playback environments to be deployed as online applications and facilitate the integration with an LMS via Web services.

Adobe Flex 2 is still in beta, with an expected release date in the second quarter of 2006. Flash Player 9 is required to playback Flex 2 authored interfaces and activities. This places an additional client side requirement for playback and authoring. It is envisaged that by the time the tools are production ready and released for general use in 2007, Flash Player 9 will be included in the QUT Standard Operating Environment (SOE).

The Authoring tool will store the cue points and their associated activities as an xml file. The interface for the Authoring tool will be built in Adobe Flex 2. The Playback tool will load the cue points from the xml file and at runtime dynamically add the cue points to the Flash video file. The Playback tool will use a combination of Flex and AJAX because it needs to display and interact with HTML activities from a Learning Management System.

LMS Integration

Both the Authoring and Playback environments need to interact with activities from a Learning Management System (LMS). This makes a lot of sense and reduces the development cost associated with rebuilding a set of generic activities already available within a LMS.

The Authoring tool needs to interact with an LMS via a Web service to:

Retrieve a list of available activities
Create, edit and delete activities
Store and retrieve a list of cue points in an XML packet

The Playback tool needs to interact with an LMS via a Web service to:

Retrieve an XML packet that contains a set of cue points and associated activity url's
Send tracking data back to the LMS for each user
Retrieve recent activity and publish as an RSS feed

Future Directions and Considerations

Prototype authoring and playback tools have successfully been integrated with QUT's Online Learning and Teaching (OLT) system. Both the playback and authoring environments are to be trialed by lecturers and students to determine whether using media to trigger collaborative activities is pedagogically useful. The tool will be evaluated in terms of improving student reflection, critical thinking and concept checking. Intergration with other popular LMS such as BlackBoard, Moodle and Sakai will also be considered.

Hypertext References

HREF1: http://www.qut.edu.au/
HREF2: http://olt.qut.edu.au/
HREF3: http://labs.adobe.com/flexproductline/

Copyright

Aneesha Bakharia © 2006. The authors assign to Southern Cross University and other educational and non-profit institutions a non-exclusive licence to use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that the article is used in full and this copyright statement is reproduced. The authors also grant a non-exclusive licence to Southern Cross University to publish this document in full on the World Wide Web and on CD-ROM and in printed form with the conference papers and for the document to be published on mirrors on the World Wide Web.