Jon Mueller
Professor of Psychology; Technology Implementation Coordinator
(630)-637-5329
jfm@noctrl.edu

Judy Walters
Associate Professor of Computer Science; Chairperson of Computer Science; Coordinator of Master of Science in Computer Science Program
(630)-637-5177
jcw@noctrl.edu

North Central College
Naperville, IL 60566

Introduction

At most technology conferences we attend there are usually one or more references to the MTV generation of students we now find in our classes. It is given as one of the justifications for including more audio, video and graphical presentation in our classrooms. But we don't need to blame TV to defend the use of multimedia. Research has well documented that the human brain processes visual information more effectively than auditory information, and that graphical information is preferred over text. Furthermore, information is stored and retrieved more effectively if learned through multiple modalities. If we ask what the brain likes most in processing information, visual imagery is near the top.

However, among the three characteristics of information that the brain likes best -- visual imagery, organization and meaning -- meaning is king. If the brain cannot extract meaning from the information, visual or not, it will usually be lost. So, what we intend to do today is to describe our early attempts to use two multimedia tools in the service of meaningful pedagogical goals.

In particular, we first looked into streaming media over the Web because for us, as I'm sure it is for you, the Web is becoming a primary conduit for teaching and learning. When media is "streamed," it is significantly compressed and then delivered almost instantaneously on demand by the receiver. Prior to streaming media, delivery of audio or video over the Web meant the receiver had to first download the media, which could take an hour or more for even a short video clip, and then open the downloaded clip to view it. With streaming media, when the user clicks on a link to a multimedia file, assuming the presence of the appropriate plug-in, the audio or video begins playing in a matter of seconds. No downloading is required. And the user can go back to that link anytime and restart the file in a few seconds.

As it is at your schools, many of our faculty are moving beyond the course Web site as just a repository of course materials. We want to deliver additional learning outside the classroom, and the course Web site is an excellent vehicle for linking to supplementary material, providing students access to interactive exercises and reviews, promoting discussion and more. Additionally, we saw the course Web site as a vehicle to deliver direct instruction. But we did not believe that simply posting course materials or class notes would effectively capture it. The typical classroom usually contains multiple modalities of instruction as the teacher verbalizes concepts in concert with using the blackboard or PowerPoint slides or video or hands-on work in a lab.

We were not asking for much. We just wanted a tool that could extend our instruction beyond the classroom without overloading the network's or the user's bandwidth. We needed a tool that would not have a steep learning curve for either the instructor or the students, that would not be too time-consuming to use and that would allow for the delivery of instruction in multiple modalities while meeting meaningful pedagogical goals. Fortunately, such tools are readily available through the RealNetworks, QuickTime and Windows Media platforms.

We selected the Real Platform as our streaming media delivery system and its accompanying media creation tools, RealPresenter and RealProducer, for several reasons.
First, limited free versions of RealPresenter, RealProducer, and RealServer are available from RealNetworks which made it easy to experiment with them before making an investment. Information Technology Services (ITS) and the student video organization on campus used this free version of RealServer, which supports sending out up to 25 free streams, to Webcast our commencement 2 years ago and the homecoming football game this past year. The radio station then used those streams to audiocast its programs on the Web. So when we decided to venture into streaming media to augment classroom instruction we already had some experience with the Real products.

To be sure that the Real products were the best for our use however before investing in the full package versions, ITS did a comparison of available products. They found that the initial purchase cost was lower with Microsoft's Windows Media products, but that long term costs were lower with the Real products since they were more stable and required fewer ITS resources to support them. In addition, Real products had the advantage of allowing content to be created, viewed, and delivered on a wider array of platforms than comparable products. For example, RealNetworks has players, content creators, and servers for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux. If we were going to create content for student viewing we wanted it to be available to as many people as possible on as many computing platforms as possible. In addition, while most of our campus uses Windows 95 PCs, Macintosh computers are used in several departments including the Language Lab and the Art Department -- excellent candidates to create content for the streaming media server.

So the decision was made to go with RealNetwork and to purchase a setup capable of delivering content to 100 simultaneous viewers. The cost of the server hardware and all the software and licenses was almost $12,000. But we had already been "testing" the waters for several years and were ready to commit to a system that would allow us to expand its use across the campus in years to come. A college interested in just getting started can start for free, as we did, and then, if they wish, set up a more modest full system for about a third of this price.

Using Streaming Media to Support Class Instruction

We wanted to proceed cautiously and start small by experimenting with, and assessing the effectiveness of, streaming media in a number of disciplines. So, during the Spring of 2000, faculty at North Central were invited to join in a pilot project to develop multimedia instructional materials that could be delivered via the Web. Six professors in areas ranging from Political Science to Philosophy to Business signed on to develop materials during the summer of 2000 to augment one of their 2000-01 courses. One professor, Judy Walters of the Computer Science department, decided to design and create materials to support a fully on-line course even though North Central had no previous history of any Web delivered courses. Other professors in areas such as French and Psychology, while not part of the official Web "group," also got involved in making similar materials to enhance their courses. Following is an account of two of these experiments.

Using Streaming Media in a Face-to-face Course: Introduction to Psychology

As I (Jon Mueller) have learned from my attendance at prior ASCUEs a few of our schools are heavily into distance learning but most of us are, and will continue to be, primarily providers of face-to-face instruction. So, my particular interest in these tools and the interest of most of our faculty is in the tools' ability to enhance the teaching and learning of face-to-face courses.

Recently I taught a psychology of humor seminar. At one point in the course I passed out a humorous piece in which a faculty member said that instead of thinking of students as just lazy or unprepared anymore, he realized that they likely suffered from syndromes or disorders. For example, he described the Attendance Aversion Disorder and others. I gave my students a chance for retaliation by asking them to construct a little humor, specifically some disorders or syndromes they believe some faculty suffer from. Needless to say, my students were quick to identify several such disorders, including the First-year Faculty Over-exuberance Syndrome. This is characterized by a 15-page syllabus, assigning 52 books and some other characteristics I cannot remember. It reminded me of my first days out of graduate school when I believed my mission was to impart to students a multitude of great ideas they just had to know about.

Gradually I learned that throwing a lot of information at my students was not sufficient or appropriate. I had to help them construct their own meaning from the material. That meant using class time to actively engage them in thinking, reflection and application. Content was still important, but I felt content could more easily be delivered outside of class than could the guidance of the students' thinking. So, I wanted to find a way to provide more of the content outside of class and to engage my students in meaningful, active learning during class time. I've found that RealPresenter, which allows the creation of streamable PowerPoint slides with accompanying audio, supports that goal.

I could just post my course notes on my Web site to give my students some of the content I would normally present in class, but I do not think many students would read them thoroughly, and it really does not capture the feel for what I am presenting. With RealPresenter, on the other hand, students can view my PowerPoint slides while simultaneously hearing my narration of those slides. They hear my intonation, my pauses. I can stop and ask questions as I would in class. I can intersperse review and humor. I can better capture the feel and impact of the classroom. And students can go back and replay the entire presentation or selected portions to review specific topics.

This past winter I created a couple of such presentations in my Introductory Psychology course and posted them on the course Web site for students to view. One presentation captured a lecture I gave in class and another summarized some text material that I was not planning to cover in class. Since this was just a pilot project, I did not require students to view the presentations or include in them material they could not find elsewhere. However, I asked them to try and view the presentations from wherever they normally access the Web. Some of the students viewed the RealPresenter lectures from on campus and some from 56K modems off campus. Although there were a few technical problems I will detail later, most students reported they were minor and that they found the media clips both helpful and engaging. I will be creating more this summer so they can be more intentionally incorporated into my Introductory Psychology course this coming fall.

Using Streaming Media in an Online Course: Problem Solving Using Spreadsheets

Since about half of the Computer Science students at North Central are working adults, we offer class in evening and weekend formats, in addition to in traditional daytime formats. However we had never, until last winter, offered an Internet course. As a small college with Liberal Arts roots we value small classes with close teacher-student interaction and tend to attract students who prefer that type of learning environment.

When the administration approved my (Judy Walters) proposal to offer a fully on-line course it was because it was just one section of a course that runs about eleven sections a year in a variety of formats. Thus it was consistent with our policy of offering students a choice of formats and delivery methods and no student would be forced into this section in order to take this course. A student would have to choose to enroll in it and steps were taken to make sure students were aware of what they were choosing so no one stumbled into it inadvertently.

Having made the decision to offer the course in this format, the challenge became how to maximize the benefits of such a delivery method. That is, my goal was not just to try to create a Web based distance education course that was "just as good" as a traditional class, but rather to exploit the potential of the medium to draw the students into a learning community and provide them with advantages beyond what a traditional class offered. Since I teach several sections a year of this course in both day and evening formats, it allowed me to assess how well this goal was met by comparing both learning outcomes and student satisfaction levels between the Internet section and my regular sections. The details of that assessment and the conclusions drawn from it are the subject of another paper, but the results were highly encouraging.

Having studied Internet delivery models for some time I knew I wanted to create an on-line course that was divided into learning units with assignments due at specified regular points in the course. As with a traditional course, students would have a full syllabus at the beginning of the course, but lessons and assignments would be made available on a weekly basis. This is very different from self-paced computer based training which, while it has its place, does not create a sense of community or allow students to work together on common projects. Our extensively used WebBoard and shared network directories allowed students to communicate regularly with me and with each other throughout the course. Introduction of new material and review was handled through the use of RealPresenter and RealProducer streamed materials -- some of which I will be demonstrating in this presentation.

The class began with 24 students, the same size as our traditional lab based courses and, after a drop, ended up with 23, about the same as with a normal class. All of the students either lived on campus or were commuter students. But we wanted to simulate as closely as possible a true distance class, so the ground rules disallowed any student coming to see me for help. All office hours and help were handled via the Internet using email, WebBoard, Instant Messenger and Chat.

From detailed surveying we learned that the students who chose to enroll in this section really liked the freedom of "anytime anywhere" learning. That is, the commuter students were all viewing course materials and working from home and almost all of the on-campus students were working from their residence hall rooms instead of coming to the campus computer labs.

Before the course even started RealProducer and RealPresenter played a key role since it was necessary to use the technology to teach the prospective students about the technology and what to expect in the course. The first step was to set up an extensive Web site which contained this information as well as tutorials on how to use WebBoard and Chat, how to use network directories and submit homework, etc. After the Web site was set up, and six weeks before the new term began, a letter was sent to all the enrolled students, detailing the technical requirements they would need if they chose to work from off campus and providing information on how to download the free RealPlayer they would need for the course from the RealNetworks Web site. Students were directed to the course Web site where they began getting acquainted with their future teacher via a "Welcome to the Course" streamed video and where they were given a set of pre-course assignments that needed to be completed by the first "day" of class. These involved such things as viewing RealPresenter and RealProducer clips, getting onto the course WebBoard and making an "Introduce Yourself" posting, and setting up their N: drive directories -- all things necessary to be able to function in the course. They were also required to send in a digital photo of themselves (taken with a digital camera or scanned in, etc.) that would be placed in the class photo gallery I was setting up.

Once the course was fully underway, streaming media filled the critical role of introducing and demonstrating new techniques and concepts. I feel I was able to do this as effectively through the media presentations as I could have in the classroom -- and student feedback supports this. As you will see when I show you one of the clips, these presentations are far from the set of bullets that come to mind when one thinks of a traditional PowerPoint lecture. Instead, since this class teaches the use of Excel spreadsheets, they consist primarily of dozens of Excel screen shots captured via software called Snagit and placed on PowerPoint slides. By using enough of these screenshots the student can view a set of actions taking place and their results as the streaming media show moves seamlessly from one slide to another while the instructor talks the students through the process -- just as if it were being demoed in a traditional class.

Advantages and Effectiveness of our Uses

Using streaming media did more than just replicate the classroom experience though. It had advantages that can't easily be duplicated there. For one thing it provided great convenience as students could view the demos at the time and place of their choosing. More importantly it allowed instruction to be differentiated between students. We discovered that stronger students were skipping demos on subjects they already understood, while students who needed more reinforcement were following a process of viewing the demos, attempting to do the follow-up assignments, and then sometimes going back and viewing selected materials again if they found they had missed something.

Had I (Judy Walters) relied on streaming media alone to teach my class I am convinced it would have been a disaster. By using it as a key component of instruction alongside other more interactive learning methods, it proved invaluable.

Regarding my (Jon Mueller) first attempts using streaming products, I was most excited by my psychology colleagues' reactions. I shared the presentations with them and they immediately saw the potential. For example, the department has gradually been turning our Introductory Psychology course into a scientific literacy course as we find so many of our students come to us unable to think from a scientific perspective. That has meant reducing the number of psychological concepts we cover so that we can engage them in more critical thinking. But RealPresenter will allow us to supplement our in-class coverage of content with mini-lectures we post on the Web. We can assign lectures to be viewed before students come to class and then use them as starting points for additional lecture or for discussion. Or we can assign a mini-lecture after an in-class discussion for review or to extend what was presented in class. Thus, we can present the content we want and still reserve some class time for those engaging activities that can best be carried out in that environment.

Additionally, a couple of my colleagues wanted to know right away if they could use one of my presentations in their courses. Once a RealPresenter presentation has been created, it is easy for anyone to link to it to use in a variety of ways. So, our department will likely build an archive of mini-lectures that any of us can link to at any time, much as we do with our video collection now. My colleagues cannot easily grab one of my live lectures and include it in their course, but they can easily utilize one created with RealPresenter.

How to Actually Make such a Presentation

The steps involved in actually making a RealPresenter or RealProducer presentation are fairly simple and straightforward, even though it can take a lot of practice to carry them out efficiently and to learn the multitude of little tricks that make the difference between a good or poor final result.

Making a RealPresenter streamed slide show is just a matter of
· creating a PowerPoint presentation, or taking one you have already made
· using RealPresenter to make .jpg files from the PowerPoint slides
· using RealPresenter to add narration or other audio input to each slide
· saving it as a streaming media presentation
· uploading it to your streaming server.

Making a RealProducer streamed video is just a matter of
· creating a video, which can be done on your computer with your Webcam
· telling RealProducer where to find the video file so it can use it as input to create a RealMedia file

· uploading it to your streaming server.

This may sound complex, but once you see it done, it is quite simple.

Perils of Streaming Media

Though easy to do once you get the hang of it, creating streaming media takes a lot of time. If you are just adding a voiceover to an existing PowerPoint presentation it may only take about 5 minutes for every minute of content you create (1 to 1.5 hours for a 15-minute clip). But if you are making a complex presentation from scratch that involves such things as shooting and editing video footage, creating a series of computer screen shots, taking and scanning in photographs, or creating complex graphics to include in your presentation, it can easily take a full day to make a 15-minute clip. Most productions will fall somewhere between these extremes, so a good ballpark figure is to count on it taking about ten minutes for every minute of content you create. Thus one would hope the clip would either reach a lot of students or be able to be reused.

In addition, although we would place RealPresenter and RealProducer in the category of easy-to-use software, there are always technical problems to be overcome. First, any time you are recording your voice, you need a quiet environment and a good microphone. We found that headset microphones created too much static and instead used tabletop microphones that came with the computer. After some experimentation we found a distance from the microphone and a voice level that provided a consistent sound level, but we still plan to invest in higher quality microphones before we make additional materials later this summer.

Second, if you want to make high quality video clips you need real video cameras and good lighting equipment. That is, a professional quality video will look professional when streamed. Quick easy-to-make ones, like the ones we initially made with the little Webcams that perch on top of our PCs, look amateurish.

Third, without really high end streaming servers there can be an excessive time lapse for presentations to buffer before they start playing in RealPlayer. Even on campus, with a high-speed network, it took about 30 seconds or longer for our initial presentations to buffer. In contrast, a video clip, which presumably is a larger file size, appeared after only about 10 seconds of buffering at numerous commercial Web sites.

We have been able to reduce the buffering time by reducing the file size of the underlying PowerPoint presentation. This was accomplished with a number of steps. For one, we stopped making long presentations, creating instead sets of shorter, more focused presentations. In addition, we began using a color scheme instead of a PowerPoint "theme" for the slide backgrounds. We also started using fewer mouse clicks and transitions in the new PowerPoint presentations we were creating to convert to streaming media. Lots of bullets whizzing in may grab the students' attention and thus be great for a classroom PowerPoint presentation, but it is not good for streaming media. Every transition to a new bullet, as well as to a new slide, causes a delay and requires a pause in the accompanying voice over while the audio track is synchronized with the new slide. These steps have improved the flow of the presentation dialog and have reduced buffering time, but it is still much higher than we would like, particularly for slower connections to the Internet.

A fourth technical problem is that, since students will be viewing materials on a variety of platforms, with different size monitors and with different speed Internet connections, materials need to be created to work well in whatever you agree on as your lowest supported technical environment. If you are using the free versions of the Real software to create presentations you will have to make different streams for different delivery speeds, directing students to click on whichever link is for the delivery speed they need. One of the big advantages of using the purchased version of the software is that it can autodetect the speed of the user's modem so the same stream can be delivered to each student at the speed his system needs to receive it.

Fifth, following up on the previous point, materials you create need to be viewed and tested on a variety of platforms to make sure they display well for all of your users.

Sixth, we found that students viewing our material from home with slower modems could not view RealProducer streamed video clips well, even at 56K. Images were jerky and not well coordinated with audio. However even at 28.8K they could smoothly receive RealPresenter PowerPoint presentations. Therefore we used more of these and very few video clips.

And finally, seventh, there is always the possibility of the streaming server or Web server going down, making your materials temporarily unavailable. We have been very lucky to have reliable equipment that is up almost all of the time and ITS staff that monitor it regularly so it will not be down without anyone at our end realizing it.

In addition to technological perils, there are pedagogical perils of using streaming media.
Many faculty do not make heavy use of PowerPoint because investing a great deal of time in creating a whole course of lecture notes inhibits them from changing what they want to say or the order they want to say it in from term to term. It makes them feel bound to present material in a certain way just because they have spent the time creating slides. We believe this is of even greater concern when creating multimedia products which are flashier and which take even more time to create than plain PowerPoint shows. When you have created a tangible product like these presentations you are reluctant to treat them as disposable. The result we fear is loss of flexibility and a disincentive to update material to keep it fresh and current.

Another potential pedagogical peril with any tool that enables presentation of information is that if not used judiciously it can further lock the teacher into a presentation or lecture mode. The perception of many is that distance learning has become more effective as it has moved away from the talking head model and created more of a sense of community through a variety of synchronous and asynchronous communication tools. Similarly, streaming media is likely to be most effective when used in conjunction with other interactive and engaging components of a course, as Judy did in her spreadsheets course.

Improving the Effectiveness of Streaming Media

Having taught my (Judy Walters) on-line course once I have learned many things that will allow me to create better materials and use streaming media more effectively when I reteach the course next winter. Some of these insights came as a result of feedback gained through the student surveys I created and the focus groups I held once the course was over.

First, I plan to make still shorter and more focused materials. This facilitates component reuse and gives the instructor more flexibility (since she may want to reuse part but not all of a longer presentation) and, as mentioned above, speeds up buffering time in the delivery process. More significantly however, from the students' point of view, it facilitates their being able to make decisions about what to view once, repeated times, or to skip altogether. A number of students said they often wanted to go back and review the media clip on a key concept or technique they were unclear on, but didn't do it because it was part of a too long clip they didn't want to sit through a second time. I asked the students, "are you saying you would prefer three 5-minute clips instead of a 15-minute one" and they replied "no, we'd actually prefer five 3-minute ones."

Second, when I teach in the classroom I use a very active learning approach and I feel I can do more to make streaming media a less passive experience. The current clips do ask simple questions on the material just presented and pause while the student thinks about the answer. But when I remake materials later this summer I plan to incorporate questions that require a higher degree of analysis such as "How would you ¼" and "What do you think would happen if ¼." followed by a demonstration of the result rather than a verbal answering of the question.

Wading in the Stream

Along with many of you, we have started wading in the stream. As we have described here today, we got our feet wet, found out it wasn't too bad, and plan to return.

We want to get others to play in the stream with us, at least to try it out. Although streaming media will eventually be used by a variety of offices on campus (e.g. admissions), we have primarily targeted faculty to consider its potential. Within faculty, I have selected the most obvious group -- the current PowerPoint users. We have quite a few faculty who have created large collections of slides for their courses. We have starting given them some Real show-and-tells to expose them to the possibilities. As faculty slowly become interested in the possibilities of streaming media, we will then train them on the tools. We have a small computer lab that doubles as a faculty development lab. In an office connected to the lab we have one computer set up with RealPresenter, RealProducer, a microphone, and a computer-top digital camera. Faculty are free to use that machine for training on the tools and to develop streaming materials.

We will be adding Blackboard, the Web based course management tool, to our network in the fall as well. As faculty become more familiar with Blackboard I believe they will explore other ways to distribute material to their students, and streaming media will become one of those tools. To help expose faculty to possible uses of technology in their teaching, we have created an Intranet resource called The Ideabook. It showcases our faculty utilizing technology in teaching, organized by pedagogy, discipline and tool. Soon faculty will be able to look here for examples of how streaming media can enhance their teaching.

Finally, although our foray into online learning is likely to be limited for quite a while, streaming media will no doubt become a significant piece of how we deliver that instruction. And if Judy's experience with it is any indication of its promise, we will be wading knee-deep in that stream before long.