Lectures On DEmand: a system for delivering traditional lectures over the Web.

1. Lectures On DEmand:a system for delivering traditional lectures over the Web. Marco Ronchetti Dipartim. Informatica e Telecomunicazioni Università di Trento Italy

2. What do we need e-learning for? • Help traditional students • e.g. provide learning material on-line • Support remote students • Make some activity faster • e.g. semi-automatically grading tests • Change the way we teach • Make it more collaborative • Create a business • Get new markets (e.g. Athabasca) • Sell content (e.g. SCORM lectures)

3. What do we need e-learning for? • Help traditional students • Support remote students • Make some activity faster • e.g. semi-automatically grading tests • Change the way we teach • Make it more collaborative • Create a business • Get new markets (e.g. Athabasca) • Sell content (e.g. SCORM lectures)

4. Traditional and remote students: how? 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…

5. Traditional and remote students: how? … what is going on in your classroom? At our place, we sometimes 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?

6. 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 Video is costly . Video is boring!

7. Videos for teaching? • TV-based • VHS cassettes • TV broadcasting of frontal lectures • Computer network based • 1998 Heyes (USA to France) The project

8. Which system should you get? • Many parameters to select!

9. Questions • What do you want to achieve ? (Define your goals) • Who is your target audience? • How you will be reaching them? (and which constraints/resources do they have?) • What do they need? (and how would they benefit from your initiative?) • Which costs can you afford? (Think not only of acquisition/installation costs, but especially of the running costs and the amount of labour needed on a day-to day basis!) • Can you define your process? • Can you define policies for your users (teachers?)

10. Which cognitive channel? • Audio is enough? -> podcasting • Slides are essential? -> webinar • Video for sense of presence? -> low resolution • Written content (e.g. blackboard) ? • -> high resolution video • -> high resolution still images

11. Distribution channels • YouTube • Customized Streaming video (DSL or better) • Not enough bandwith? download • Still not enough? DVD • Mobile devices? • Mp4 reader • Cell-phones (resolution ?) • i-phone

12. Acquisition style • Fully automatic • Manual acquisition • Delegated to the teacher • (e.g. start, stop, macros)

13. Device independence • Playback • Acquisition • Ppt? Pdf? Html?

14. Setup and portability • Laptop, radio mic + videocam • Fixed installation (mic arrays, standard setup) • Video grabbing

15. Post-processing • Fully automatic up to publication? • Feature extraction (e.g. automatic markup)

16. So, which system? • Like when buying a house, you will probably find that there is not a solution that fullfills all your dreams and constraints, and you will have to sacrifice some aspect to get the best possible match.

17. Our requirements • the lectures should be easily browsed, with some form of indexing and a direct access to any time-location in the lecture; • lectures should be visible on all major platforms (Windows/Linux/Macintosh) • lectures should be available (in some form)also to students who do not have a large band Internet connection;

18. Videolectures today: an example • Lode http://latemar.science.unitn.it/LODE (freely available) Many similar systems are around + ipod explosion

19. Logical Architecture Synchronous (webcast) Asynchronous (On line, or download) Asynchronous(CD - DVD)

20. Our requirements • impact on lectures should be minimal; • production costs should be minimal, so as to allow scaling the approach to most courses. • Set-up must be lightweight! • Operations must be simple (low level skills!) • Post-processing operations must be light (i.e. almost automatic), and not require much work

21. System Architecture LODE acquisition OnStage Web Server Browser Video Streamer DVD

22. The system We had a Linux version (2003: acquisition - Ubuntu, postprocessing Fedora) We moved to a Windows XP (2005) to have a more familiar environment. Now acquisition and post processing can be done on the same machine. Available! But: Not a product! Installation not simple!

23. 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 • It must be also possible to use the blackboard!

24. LODE: the user interface

25. Acquisition setup

26. Detail of camera and mic receiver

27. Our first 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 6 CDs or a single DVD).

28. Student feedback 75% anticipated using the system often or very often Enthusiastic. We were “forced” to extend the experiment to a second course!

29. 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;

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

31. Assessing costs: initial costs: • Software acquisition • (almost) 0 Euro (QuickTime, Java, Javascript, Darwin Streaming Server, open source components, our sw + one non-free component) • Hardware acquisition: • SERVER 1000 Euro • ACQUISITION STATION 1400-2400 Euro • 1 Laptop (Euro 800-1500) • 1 Digital Camera (Euro 400) • 1 Radio Microphone (Euro 200-500)

32. 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 (5 minutes) • starting the post-processing: 5 minutes. The post processing would then go by itself for approx. 1 hours for producing a streams of 1 hour. • ending the post-processing (uploading the video on the web site, producing the master CD): 15 minutes. => 35 minutes extra work for a 2 hours lecture

33. Conclusion: the past • We have explored the possibility of breaking the space-time constraints of the traditional classroom • Student feedback was enthusiastic, • Costs are sustainable and scale well

34. Conclusion: the future • Further developments • Semantic indexing of the content • Video editing • Tighter integration within a collaborative environment

35. Wait a second… In the schools? Armando Pisani, Gorizia www.opendante.com

36. Studenti e genitori interpellati tramite questionario hanno espresso commenti molto positivi sull’utilità delle lezioni via • Effetto statisticamente misrabile sulle "performance" degli studenti