Figure 1: Typical configuration of recording equipment
Figure 2: production and broacast equipment
David Lowe, Nectar
Costadopolous, Peter Dalmaris, Magdalene Fong
Faculty of Engineering, University of Technology, Sydney
P.O. Box 123, Broadway NSW 2007 Australia
dbl@eng.uts.edu.au, nectar@eng.uts.edu.au,
peter_dlm@hotmail.com, mfong@nectar.com.au
This paper describes the results of a project that investigated both the practical logistics of utilising streaming audio and video, and the educational impact of this utilisation. This includes providing live internet broadcasts of class sessions (supported by mechanisms for remote students to provide immediate feedback and ask questions during these sessions) as well as indexed archives of the class sessions and other audio-visual learning resources.
Audio and video information is extensively used in supporting teaching and learning. At the simplest level, all lectures, tutorials, workshops, seminars, etc. convey considerable information through these media. However these (valuable) sources of information and learning experiences have typically required attendance by the student at a physical location and a specific time. We have, to a limited extent, been able to circumvent this by recording these class sessions and making available to students other audio or video-based learning resources (tapes, video's etc.). However these still require a physical resource which students need to access (through, for example, a library), and the resource itself is typically limited in quantity and accessibility.
This paper describes the results of a project which addresses these problems through these use of streaming audio and video. Both the practical logistics of utilising streaming media and the educational impact of this utilisation are considered. The project inluded providing live internet broadcasts of class sessions (supported by mechanisms for remote students to provide immediate feedback and ask questions during these sessions) as well as indexed archives of the class sessions and other audio-visual learning resources.
Reception and playback of this broadcast does not require any specialised hardware beyond a current personal computer with internet access (and configured with public domain software). Indeed the interface to such a scheme was provided through the World Wide Web in a very flexible fashion. The audio and video quality is dependent upon the speed of the internet connection, but even with relatively slow modem connections the audio is equivalent to at least an AM radio broadcast.
Such a scheme allowed the provision of audio and video teaching and learning materials to students in a flexible fashion. For example students were able to listen to current seminars from a remote location and access and review previous lectures. This is significant for all forms of education, but has the potential to provide immediate and substantial benefits especially for postgraduate programs. With many of these programs flexibility is a high priority, lowering the cost (especially for full-fee paying courses) is a major concern, and the immediacy of access to information is critical. All of these concerns are at least partially addressed through the provision of information (including audio and video) via the internet.
There are two key reasons for utilising internet and Web technologies in the way in which we are proposing: to improve learning outcomes and to positively affect the educational logistics (such as access or equity).
In terms of pedagogical considerations, there is a rapidly growing body of literature which considers the implications of technology on education. If we consider McLuhan's (McLuhan and Fiore, 1967) observation that "the medium is the message", then we should be able to readily see that we are potentially changing the educational medium rather fundamentally, and hence we are likely to be also changing the "message" and therefore the educational outcomes - though positively or negatively is not immediately clear (there is still significant debate in the literature on whether technology is - or can be - a positive force; see (Dusick, 1998) for a good discussion).
It is not however for pedagogical reasons that we were primarily interested in investigating the use of these particular technologies. Our primary purpose was to develop an understanding of the impact on flexibility of students approached to learning. This is not to diminish the importance of ensuring that that we are not damaging the educational outcomes. Rather we were interested in investigating whether the use of these technologies empowered students to learn in ways which were not previously possible. Once this is established we can then investigate the pedagogical implications of this. Let us then consider the logistical implications of the technologies.
The internet has the potential to provide a very flexible environment for the provision of educational material in a distributed fashion, in support of distance education. Web-based Training (WBT) has grown phenomenally in scope [HREF4]. As a very simple level this can include the use of online discussion groups, Web- based provision of course notes, collaboration with other students and access to staff via email, etc. A number of increasingly sophisticated systems have been developed (and are continuing to be developed) which integrate this functionality into a cohesive whole. Examples include Learning Space [HREF2], TopClass [HREF3], WebCT [HREF1] and WebMentor [HREF1].
Most courses developed to utilise the Web are, however, currently limited by the lack of interactivity which is normally provided by personal contact. One possible way of partially addressing this limitation is to support the educational process with audio and video resources. A number of commercial organisations (including various radio stations) have already begun extensive use of the internet for distributing both live and recorded audio. This had demonstrated the technical feasibility of using the internet for audio. Non-internet audio sources have been extensively used in education for many years (such as making audio and video tapes available for student access) demonstrating the effectiveness of these as a teaching resource. The project described in this paper is looking at combining the best of these various approaches in supporting flexible approaches to teaching.
This project developed a system that allows live broadcasting via the internet, as well as simultaneously recording the same audio and video for later access. The project aimed to evaluate mechanisms for supporting flexible learning, by using the internet to support remote access to recorded lectures, tutorials and other educational materials. The overall project objectives were:
The project had had three primary outcomes:
The project involved three primary steps. The first step was to develop the physical system to support the project. This system involved a Web server to support the pages associated with the project (such as project information and archive indexes, refer to http://ise.ee.uts.edu.au/vcdf/), a streaming audio and video server to serve the media, and another machine for the live encoding process (with suitable capture and editing software). We used high quality recording equipment (such as a wireless microphone, boundary microphones, an audio mixer, and a JVC SVHS professional camera). A typical configuration for the recording equipment is shown in Figure 1, and the production and broadcast equipment is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: production and broacast equipment
Several part-time technical officers were employed to support the management of the equipment. Although the roles were a little blurred, one technical officer was largely responsible for managing the recording equipment and undertaking the recording, whilst the other managed the server hardware and software.
The second step of the project was to undertake evaluations of the educational effectiveness of using the system to support student learning. This is discussed in more detail below.
The third step of the project was to develop a set of conclusions defining how the technology can be most effectively utilised in a broader range of educational environments. This also provided a set of practical guidelines on when the technology should be used and how the technology can be incorporated into existing subjects.
The project involved two main subjects - one was a mid-course undergraduate engineering subject and the other was a postgraduate subject focussed on media management, coding, analysis and representation. For each subject all lectures were broadcast live on the internet, as well as being recorded and added to an archive for later access by students. For each recording, various resolutions were made available (to accomodate the varying hardware and bandwidths available to students). The following table shows a typical set of recordings for a single class.
|
Recording |
Production Details |
|---|---|
|
Live RealAudio broadcast of lecture. |
Setup of computer encoding machine for live RealAudio broadcasting took approx. 10 mins for each class. Pack up after lecture would take approx. 10 mins. |
|
20 kbps RealVideo, 176 x 128 pixels |
Setup of recording equipment would
take approx. 15 mins. Filming lecture approx. 3
hours. Pack up approx. 15 mins. |
|
Java enabled chat session during live broadcast. |
A Java chat applet was used which supported student feedback during the live broadcasts. Typically a student monitored this computer and relayed any messages to the subject lecturer during the class session. |
The effectiveness of the internet-based audio-visual sources as a student learning resource was analysed to determine the extent to which this technology assisted in the flexibility of the learning process, and the impact on the quality of the learning. At this stage we are using server- based tools to monitor use of the audio-visual material, and have undertaken a student survey on their use of the technology, as well as a number of interviews with students.
From the various log files we have extracted the various usage patterns of the students. For example Figure 3 shows a typical usage pattern over a 24 hour period. This indicates an interesting study pattern - peaking in the middle of the day and late at night - times not normally associated with class sessions. A more detailed analysis of both the usage logs and the results of student surveys provided further insights. These include:
The quality of the audio material was generally very good (though care needs to be taken with boundary microphones to ensure that comments from students were picked up). The video quality was less acceptable. Although it was adequate for general viewing, it was typically problematic if diagrams or notes were written on a board. In general it was found that these diagrams need to be provided separately on the Web.
Students found the internet-based audio-visual material an important additional resource - largely using it for revision and review, rather than as a primary mechanism for studying the course. Where students were required to rely solely on this material (such as occurred with one student who was transferred to the U.S. early in the course) they found the resources adequate for studying the course, but believed that the poorer interaction hindered the learning experience.
Students generally believed that the internet-based audio-visual materials could only be an effective replacement for face-to-face classes if they were carefully integrated with a number of additional support materials, including mechanisms for active student-staff and student- student discussion and carefully designed course materials.
There was a noticeable difference between the usage patterns of postgraduates and undergraduate students. The undergraduate students were much less willing to adapt to using this new technology. Less than 30% of the undergraduate students accessed the archived material more then twice during the semester, compared to 77% of the postgraduate students. This did not appear to be a consequence of students' access to computing resources, but rather seems to have been related to key factors. The first of these was that a much greater percentage of the postgraduate students were in full-time employment and as such the logistics for them made the use of the web-based video archive much more appealing. The second reason was that the undergraduate students were studying a subject which was an integrated part of a broader course, and most of them would have been taking a number of other 'conventional' subjects. The same was much less true for the postgraduate students, many of whom were taking only one or two subjects and each subject was largely self-contained. This indicated that the students were more interested in using this technology where it is cohesively supported an entire program. This was borne out in discussions with students, though would need further research to confirm.
There was little pattern in the location from which students accessed the material - being quite evenly balanced between on-campus, home (we provide the students with PPP dial-in access) and work. One aspect which was very noticeable was the relationship between type of access and location. There was a correlation (though not enough data was available to determine reliably the extent of the correlation) between access to the live broadcasts and what seems to accesses from a work location or a home location which is a considerable distance from the campus. Very few accesses to the live broadcasts came from on-campus. This is quite logical: if students are at the campus (or live nearby) then they will attend the class. Only if they are unable to attend to the class becuase of work commitments or a long commute will they resort to the live broadcasts.
Conversely, virtually all access from on-campus were for the archived material, and usually material covered within the last two weeks. This indicates that the students found the recordings useful to revision even if they had been able to attend to the class.
Although the internet is becoming increasingly used to support flexible approaches to learning, and streaming audio and video are becoming common, little consideration has been given to evaluating the educational implications of providing internet-based access to audio-visual material. This project has addressed this issue. This project looks at approaches to enabling staff to determine both the relevance and potential difficulties in adopting these technologies.
Overall the project was very successful, indicating that streaming audio and video can be a very useful learning resource. However a number of important considerations became clear. The effort required to develop these resources at a level that was effective was quite substantial. Generating these resources "on-the-cheap" tended to lead to material which was ineffective at best and confusing (and hence educationally problematic) at worse. Similarly, the material was only effective when supported by comprehensive course material and mechanisms for student interaction. Ongoing research is looking at the combinations of resources which provide the most effective learning environment.
Note: Further details on this project, and the various resources used, can be found at: http://ise.ee.uts.edu.au/vcdf/
The authors wish to acknowledge the support provided for this research by the 1998 UTS Vice-Chancellors Development Fund.
Dusick, D. M. (1998) "The Learning Effectiveness of Educational Technology: What Does that Really Mean?", In Educational Technology Review, Autumn/Winter 1998, AACE
Kohl, P. L. & Witty, E. P (1996) "Equity Challenges" In J Sikula (ed), Handbook of Research on Teacher Education: A Project of the Association of Teacher Education (2nd Ed.), pp 837-866, New York, Macmillan
McLuhan, M. and Fiore, Q (1967), The Medium is the Message, New York, Bantam Books.
Stanley, D. (1998) "2001 Management", Simon & Schuster Limited, London
West (1997) "West Report on Higher Education, section 1.3.1 Impact of Technology, Australian Higher Education in the Era of Mass Customisation", August 1997, Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs, Canberra
David Lowe, Nectar Costadopolous, Peter Dalmaris and Magdalene Fong, © 1999. The author assigns 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 author also grants 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.