Pandæmonium

It was a big audience for this session, presented by Michael Beahan and James Bartholomew at the Jones Media Center at the Dartmouth College Library. The Jones Media Center has 17 multimedia creation stations, and 2 project rooms. It seems to be a combination of the TLC and MRC at Richmond.

They've had class lecture recordings posted to the network, but IT will be working on implementing this on a campus-wide program. Like our TLC, they loan out equipment for media production. Training is also available, including some training videos.

Dartmouth is redesigning their home page (due July 1), and it will offer many more videos of campus events. Dartmouth has an Internship in Digital Media Technology.
Responsibilities include:

• One year, full time, paid with benefits
• Assists students and faculty with multimedia projects
• Leads workshops
• Automated process for streaming and podcasting

They wanted a centralized source to simultaneously create:

• Streaming Video
• Video Podcast
• Audio Podcast
• DVD Video

Goals:

• One file for streaming and video podcasting
• One encoding for audio podcasting
• Three delivery methods

MPEG-4 Part 12 (mp4) was the format they chose to use as the “container”. Two codecs: MPEG-4 Part 2 has better compression efficiency than MPEG-2. AAC audio was the only choice for podcasts. MPEG-4 Part 10 Video / h.264 / AVC has high playback processing requirements. h264 is smaller on the screen too, so MPEG-4 Part 2 makes more sense. Data rate is the same for either.

Their choices then were MPAG-4 Part 2 Video (Advanced Simple Profile, and the MPEG-2 Part 7 Audio (AAC). They do hint all of the vide and audio. Only a little bit of data is required, and it facilitates streaming.

Why automate? They had 61 encoding requests for the spring 2006 term, and more requests are coming. Encoding media one at a time is not feasible.

They have a server running Linux, with open source tools, with scripts to link tools together (shell & php). Other than the MPEG royalties and the server itself, everything is free.

Video is submitted via SFTP. The video file and the metadata are both needed. They prefer RAW DV format, but will take many formats. The metadata file includes which outputs they want (streaming video, video podcast, etc.). Scripts read the metadata and send the file to be processed to the appropriate programs.

They use PHP scripts to generate XML RSS feeds, and will assist in getting the feed set up in the iTunes Podcast store.

Their JMC Flix program podcast highlights items in the JMC collection. So vodcasts are being used for promotion in addition to lectures. Items to be streamed are moved over automatically but the one manual step is to put an entry into the library catalog. Dartmouth uses Millennium for their catalog, and there is integration between Millennium and Blackboard. They plan to use course reserves via Blackboard to provide access to streaming media this fall.

For DVDs, they use the highest possible data rate up to the 4.7GB capacity on a disc.

THey plan to expand into public lectures, performance podcasts and Library education programs. The system is getting used. There are 118 subscriptions to the JMC promotional vodcast. Students are subscribing to vodcasts and podcasts, in addition to streaming access. They had 893 uses of streaming reserve material in the spring of 2006 (this number is well below what our Music Library has done with streaming audio this past semester with just our Music department, but still encouraging).

Several questions came up regarding copyright and authentication. Dartmouth has a good scheme overall, which will be improved when they integrate with Blackboard this fall. People submitting files sign off that they have copyright on the media, and this information goes into the Library catalog. James did all of this media work and programming on his own.

Accessibility, including captioning, are also on Dartmouth's horizon.

Technorati Tags: nmc2006

Richmond looked at Pachyderm just before I joined ATS in 2003. We decided to pursue other technologies instead of Pachyderm. As a result I never really understood what the application is like. While NMC has presented several sessions on Pachyderm, I had other sessions that I needed to attend. This morning's session on using Pachyderm as a presentation tool in the classroom offers an alternate use of the program, but I'm hoping to learn more about Pachyderm overall.

Catherine Gynn and Susan Fisher of Ohio State University presented. Only one person in the room other than the presenters was familiar with Pachyderm. Catherine (from the The Advanced Computing Center for the Arts & Design presented the history of the program. The Digital Union at Ohio State was the perfect organization to explore the program while it was still in beta.

Pachyderm was not set up to be a presentation tool – it's an interactive authoring environment, that allows for an exploration of ideas from different perspectives. Ohio State wanted to contribute something to the project but didn't have programming staff.

They discussed the features they wanted in a presentation tool. PowerPoint is evil. But it was important to think about they ways they are teaching to see how the tools can help. Pachyderm is a different tool, but would the tool improve presentations.

PowerPoint is not dynamic. They were looking at Pachyderm as a sophisticated multi-modal tool. There's no metadata in PowerPoint, but Pachyderm is made for this. You can make a conforming object so others can find it. Objects in Pachyderm can be updated by people who aren't programmers.

Can they improve access, quality or cut the cost? These are the three criteria that drove the project.

Once you've logged in, you can create an object. There are several kinds of templates that are available to be used, including Aspects, Commentary, Enlargement, Exploration, Layers, Media Focus, etc. Catherine suggests users read the manual to understand the different templates and their uses.

The server code is not yet available, but it is going to be made available as open source. There are no more beta accounts available, so everyone needs to wait for the general release.

Catherine walked us through putting an image into a page, with text. Text can be adjusted via HTML tags. She published the object (“with zip file”).

Susan Fisher took over the presentation at this point, talking about Pachyderm from the faculty's point of view. She used Pachyderm as a presentation tool for the entry level non-majors Biology course. One challenge is that no one wants to attend the class – they are from every other discipline on campus. And her class had 700 students, which was a whole other challenge. Students don't seem to retain much, but they need to remember this stuff beyond college to handle questions about things like stem cell research, evolution and global warming.

She decided to capitalize on pre-existing skill sets that her students were bringing to the course. In addition, there is a significant percentage of students in a 700 student class with learning pathologies that you need to address. There are also students who just don't absorb material in a lecture format. Only 30% of students absorb material in a lecture.

She relied on the arts since everyone spent time in kindergarten had art experience. She also worked with animation, working with students in a multi-modal way to get the material across. Susan is not particularly technically proficient, and doesn't like to give 700 students a minute to lose focus while she “fiddles around with the computer console”.

She wanted a seamless delivery method for her class. Pachyderm has the potential to do this. She then showed us a presentation she's done at several universities, on teaching science to the MTV generation.

The presentation “slides” Susan used in Pachyderm had a navigation bar at the bottom, with 7 slides listed at a time and an arrow presumably pointing to additional slides to be accessed. An image displayed on the left side of the screen, with a vertical line in the middle of the page separating the image from the slide text. There was enough room for a slide “title” at the top, which was bold, and up to four points for the slide. Text (punctuation) was used in lieu of bullets.

When Susan got to her Dancing DNA page, the image was replaced by a video on the left. The video was actually an image, and clicking on the “play” button launched a new window containing a QuickTime movie (Dancing DNA). The video contained both a computer-generated animation and a dance piece demonstrating mitosis. They used original music, which was good (kudos to Beverly Botsford). Susan talked through the video explaining what we were seeing as we watched. This was effective.

Susan also showed videos on the Krebs cycle (using a marching band) and photosynthesis (using football players to illustrate the Z-scheme). Susan did seem to have trouble with navigation bar, which made noises as she navigated. There weren't easy queues for her to know which slide had the video on it (other than the buttons beneath the video, which were small).

In the end, what impressed me in the session were the videos. Pachyderm as a presentation tool wasn't as impressive. The navigation bar seemed difficult when moving beyond what was displayed and the slides don't seem to contain more information than a PowerPoint presentation. Images in particular seemed to have too much white space around them – I would have liked to have seen larger images or more text. Like PowerPoint, the presentation can be uploaded into a course management system. There is an ability for people to jump to different points in the presentation in a non-linear way (tools like Breeze Presenter or Captivate offer these features). Loading time for videos is another draw-back, and you can't change the ping sound that happens when you mouse over a navigation button.

Technorati Tags: nmc2006

Laura Gough from Houston Community College presented this topic. She's had lots of experience in training in addition to her academic background.

This began with a Title V grant but is now sustained by the school.

The session began with a video from Larry Mers. I'd seen this two years ago in Vancouver.

First year focus: five curriculum innovation centers, with onsite technicians and a fellowship program.

Two classes were highlighted:

• Building community in the online classroom – making distance courses more than correspondence courses. The instructor has to facilitate.
• When technology fails – what to do? They opened up the computers to understand the pieces that can go wrong?

She tried Pachyderm for this presentation but used PowerPoint.

The reason they have sustained support is that through the grant the five centers have become support units for their respective colleges. The group meets every Wednesday and has a big voice with the academic administration.

There are two certificates:

• Basic Certificate: 36 clock hours plus 8 hours of electives
• Advanced Certificate: 40 clock hours plus 8 hours and portfolio review

The site URL is: http://imctraining.hccs.edu/classes/start.htm

Classes are basically 4 hours in length with the exception of PowerPoint, an elective, which is still 8. Flexibility is hard for faculty.

Some links of interest:

• WebCT Exemplary Course Project
• Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board Guide for Incorporating the Principles of Good Practice into Electronically-Based Courses

They have a minimum of three learners per class. They do not pursue billing people who have missed a session.

Enrollment is online, and participants specify their supervisor (Department Chair or Dean). The program asks instructors to send out an e-mail the day before the session. Classes are free.

Copyright class is online. They couldn't get anyone to teach it. Instructor-led would be preferable.

Faculty want to complete all of it in one week, in between semesters. January and May Boot Camps were the results. Army hats, etc. are given to the faculty. Some other stuff too. They do have food. They found they can't offer the classes in August because instructors aren't all available.

Classes are also available individually throughout the fall, spring an summer classes.

They're not able to use PeopleSoft to track professional development in the ERP. They used WebCT. The class serves as a record repository, and students can see their progress. Students take quizzes at the end of the course. Scores are compared with attendance rosters to sign off on participation. They use two-question quizzes.

They don't allow faculty to place out of a course unless the faculty teach that application for the school.

Post-workshop support is available through the Curriculum Innovation Centers. Faculty can make appointments with the mentors or show up when a mentor is scheduled.

Total participant counts are going up over the years. Adjuncts are interested in coming, but don't have the time to come. 80% of the participants are full-time faculty, 20% are part-time. Some deans and department chairs use these certificates in their annual evaluations.

Full-time faculty receive a $250 stipend for completion of either the Basic or Advanced Certificates. Full-time faculty get $50 per overload course taught, and part time faculty receive an additional $50 per course taught. Distance Education (anything fully online) professors must have the Basic Certificate in order to teach as of the fall of 2006.

Faculty teach half of the classes, it costs about $25,000 a year, about $95 per class. No payment for mileage, extra development time or for copies of handouts. IMS staff teaches the rest, so those costs are “hidden”. They have two faculty/staff trainers.

They are assessing the program with faculty. 172 surveyed, 34 responded. Good feedback overall, especially with troubleshooting technology.

They are now considering a Certification in Teaching and Learning Effectiveness for fall 2006.

Technorati Tags: nmc2006

The May 19th edition of The Chronicle Review has an article entitled “Cultural Renaissance or Cultural Divide?” by Bill Ivey and Steven J. Tepper. The idea is that prior to the 20th century, culture was local. But media made it possible to centralize culture with professional actors and singers recorded and distributed to all. The effect was that local culture took a back seat to professional culture. One of the down sides of this is that the media only allow us to access a tiny minority of the work that's created. Only some songs are distributed, only some movies get released.

But now that it's possible for people to create and distribute their own media using comptuters and the internet, we are at the begining of a new era of the people creating the culture. The culture that “professional amateurs” create will compete in some ways against the mainstream media. The difference between now and the 19th century is that what is created won't be shared locally (not necessarily, anyway): The internet allows people to connect according to their interests. So Cajun or Rap musicians can connect with an audience that wants to hear them rather than relying on people in their vicinity to listen. But the authors suggest that the centralized media of the 20th century may be an abberation, between the 19th century, when people created and shared their culture and the 21st century when digital media makes it possible to share your creative works with the rest of the world without the assistance of a large media company.

All this tells me that I need to get a bit busier working with Garage Band and iMovie.

The point of their essay, though, is that it costs money to be a part of the professional amateurs who are now broadening the definition of culture. Not everyone has money to do this, and so while some of us are out there changing and challenging culture, others will continue to get their culture from Wal-Mart and Clear Channel Radio. They don't propose a solution, but I sure how we find one.

This session was Blackboard’s chance to tell us all about what’s coming. Lots of marketing, a little information, and not too much about a timeline. Let me start by saying that I’m getting a little tired of everyone piling onto the Web 2.0 concept. The session started by explaining that we were moving from eLearning 1.0 to 2.0.

The Blackboard Beyond Initiative is the company’s effort to build specific services to address the “2.0” features eLearning needs. To extend the platform, Blackboard plans to have a centrally hosted learning objects repository that can be accessed from the Learning system. Clients will be able to pull down learning objects into their Bb courses or to post learning objects so that other Bb courses can use them. For social networks, they plan to use the scholar.com web site to allow faculty and students of a particular discipline to communicate with their counterparts from other Bb schools. To me, scholar.com is the most compelling feature of the Beyond initiative – I think it has the most potential to transform learning. For lifelong learning, Bb plans to centrally host portfolios so lifelong learners can continue to build their portfolios as they move from institution to institution. Not bad, but since we don’t have the Bb Content system, this isn’t a service we’ll see. Finally the outcomes service will allow institutions to anonymously share institutional data so other schools can benchmark themselves. I suspect this will be a tie-in to the Caliper application whenever it is released, so again, this feature isn’t one I expect to use.

Matthew Pittinsky said these four efforts were only the beginning. The plan is to use Blackboard’s Idea Exchange, a gathering of 100-150 clients, to shape these future services and any others that might support eLearning 2.0. Just before I went to San Diego, I signed up for the Idea Exchange. So far all I’ve got is a neat little ribbon that I wore on my conference badge, but in time I hope to have an ear and a voice in the discussions for Blackboard’s future direction.

As for product highlights, here are some of the details:

• A self-testing capability, where students can take assessments without impacting the gradebook. It’s possible for the instructor to know the score along with the student, but things can be configured so only the student sees the score.
• New multiple time features that allow students to take assessments more than once. Scores can be average, highest, lowest, last…
• The WYSIWYG editor will work in Safari. I may actually turn this feature on.
• Blogs that can be published inside or outside of Blackboard. I’ll have to see the implementation of this. I hope RSS and enclosures are supported for external blogs.
• Roles have been modified so that observers can be linked to more than one student. This could allow advisors to see how their advisees are doing in the online portions of their classes.
• An early warning system that alerts instructors or system administrators, generating e-mail inside the system or out. Not really sure what triggers the warnings – if anyone reading this caught that part, please leave a comment to explain this feature.
• Changes to the Content system include evaluation portfolios and customization within the portfolio system.
• Blackboard is fully internationalized, comes with 10 languages and a language editor for anyone who wants to build more languages into the system. You can run multiple languages simultaneously on the system and there are three different modes for viewing each language.
• Blackboard is now integrated into Sharepoint – the system connect to Sharepoint and Active Directory.
• Blackboard’s new Backpack application will sync with the server to take content offline. Someday it will sync back up as well.
• Caliper, yet to be released, is an evaluation and assessment system designed to link learning objectives to programs and even course content. You will be able to track how students are meeting objectives.
• Blackboard now has an open beta process, where they release early copies of their upcoming versions for testing in real environments. Personally I will always wait for the first service pack before I consider installing a new version. Features are nice, stability is crucial.

As for Building Blocks, they talked about the Copyright Clearinghouse building block, which allows faculty to get copyright clearance for items they wish to post in the course. It’s not a bad Building Block, but it requires institutional roles so you have to have the Community system to use it. Blackboard also talked about LAMS, a graphical sequencer for course content. It looks good, but we don’t have many faculty who use Blackboard’s sequencing capabilities.

Blackboard wants to extend its certificate programs. Right now there’s a program whereby faculty can be “Blackboard Certified.” In the future Bb may have a System Administrator Certificate. There’s also a Blackboard for Dummies book coming next month.

The weekend approaches. Somewhere between creating a project web site and team evaluations, I hope to catch up with more entries from Bb World 06. If you're still reading, thanks for your patience.

Brigham Young University has been doing their homework on how Blackboard is being used. By mining the information in Blackboard they can tell us that 3/4 of the school’s courses are in Blackboard, the system contains 360 GB of course content, it receives over 700,000 hits a day, and in the Fall of 2005 there were 2 million quizzes. 2 million for Fall term alone!

They wanted a method for monitoring Blackboard’s “vital signs” – a way of being sure the system was healthy and that use of it was growing. In addition, they sat down with stakeholders – anyone they could find who had a vested interest in the system (or who should have an interest) and conducted some qualitative feedback on Blackboard.

The vital signs to track?

• Usage: how much is the system used and how? Which features are being used? This data was easy to grab since it comes from the system. BYU was able to see which tools were getting lots of use and which weren’t. This affected their outreach, since they could promote tools that weren’t being used but also to promote alternate uses of popular tools.
• Satisfaction: Over the course of three terms, BYU conducted brief surveys of students and faculty. Students reported in increasing numbers (75%, 75% and 86% for the past 3 semesters) that Blackboard was easy to learn & use. Faculty, however, reported in increasing numbers (18%, 16% and 28%) that Blackboard is difficult to learn and use. The presenters said there could be several reasons for the uptick in difficulty.
• Efficiency: Monitoring faculty and student efficiency allows them to help everyone be more efficient in teaching & learning overall. Through surveys they tracked opinions of whether Blackboard has increased their workloads (students: 14%, 23% and 25%; faculty: 41%, 26%, and 24%) with an eye on developing training (more for faculty than students) on how to be more efficient in Blackboard.
• Stability: BYU had significant stability issues (with Assessments) in their second semester of tracking information. They’ve moved to the ASP model as a result and things are working better now. They rightly describe stability as the #1 vital sign to track.
• Knowledge: They also tracked whether faculty and students feel as if they know how to use Blackboard, with overall positive results.

Next steps include revisions to the vital signs to monitor, as well as plans for a cross-institutional study. I almost jumped at this one, but I want Richmond to get our statistics together before we join into a larger review.

More information can be found on their Center for Instructional Design web site. The presentation can be found on Jonathan Mott’s page (scroll down to the Presentations section).

Today's my day to catch up in the office, but I'll be adding more summaries of sessions from Blackboard World '06 over the next few days. Thanks to Greg Ritter for pointing readers of Blackboard's Educate Innovate blog to my blog!