Abstract

With rapidly increasing use of the Internet for education we are witnessing a major change in distance education. Courseware and delivery are being transformed from off-line to on-line teaching and learning. The digital forms of multimedia for Web-based learning offer more widespread distribution of learning opportunities for students and more efficient teaching by course providers. But something is being left behind in the transition to new media. In the rush to take advantage of the Internet for distributed learning, instructional video is being omitted from the equation. The lack of bandwidth prohibits effective use of video in on-line learning. The mounting of Web-based courses is far outpacing the deployment of the high speed networks that are required for video support. Until there is widespread capacity for video streaming, on-line learning will fall short of the teaching and learning opportunities promised by the new media. This paper describes an intermediate technology solution to the video problem in Web-based learning. Models of hybrid, near-line video streaming are proposed.

The Rise and Fall of Educational Television

Distance education since the 1970’s has been defined largely by television. The great equalizer for educational opportunity was to broadcast instruction. In 1969, the British Open University defined distance education when in partnership with the BBC, it made enrolment in university possible for all who had a television. Televised courses quickly became recognized as the best means to deliver instruction to those who could not attend classes. Americans popularized the telecourse format in the 1980s. The typical telecourse consisted of twenty-six half-hour television programs packaged with textbook, study guide, student and faculty manuals. North American telecourses were delivered in 13 week broadcast schedules that catered to the college tri-semester system. Add to this mix, audiotapes, the postal system and the telephone and we have distance education as the original television-based multimedia learning experience.

There has always been more to distance education, however, than mere television. Best practices in distance education employ an integration of media formats, content presentation, delivery systems, and personal interactions. Educational technologies, qua process and hardware, are selected, manipulated and applied to the greatest effect for the organization of material, its distribution, and for teaching and learning interactions. In the latter half of the 1990s we have seen the role of television change from key pedagogical component of the learning system to lesser roles such as helping pace students in their independent study and promoting the institution with a public television image. The instructional role of ETV was replaced by videotaped programs, recorded off-air by students or borrowed from the library for later use. The importance of video varied from course to course, but unlike television, portable archived recordings (videotape) provided far more flexibility to meet the needs of the distance learner than what could be offered by television on a fixed broadcast schedule.

ETV proliferated in Canada during the final three decades of the twentieth century. Télé-université Quebec, TV Ontario, ACCESS Alberta, and British Columbia’s Knowledge Network, were all established primarily for the support of distance learning through television broadcasting. But now, at the close of the century, we are rapidly moving from an analog to a digital era where new media has become the rubric for all manner of communication that is not face-to-face. New media may be defined as information that is data, organized and displayed in a variety of text, audio, and graphic forms, with static and moving images, all integrated and accessible from one machine — the computer. On the eve of the millenium, we look behind us and we see the rise and fall of educational television as we have come to know it. This paper is concerned with the analog to digital evolution in education and focuses on video in the new multimedia mix in distributed teaching and learning.

New Media

In its 1999 State of the Internet report, the United States Internet Commission described the growth of the Internet compared to other communications technologies of the past:

Distance education or open learning may now be called distributed teaching and learning (from host to client and client to client), or Web-based learning, or on-line learning. On-line implies computer-mediated communications (CMC), the virtual classroom, or virtual university where the student may never see or speak with a "live" person from admissions and registration to receiving instruction and final grades. Pure on-line learning raises lots of questions. A recent TeleLearning study commissioned by Industry Canada, focused on a sample of key providers of on-line post-secondary education. The ensuing competitive analysis report reveals a cross-section of approaches to planning, resource allocation, and market share in the new on-line education industry. (Massey and Curry, 1999). Recurring issues revolving around concerns about access that have been the focus of attention for distance educators are beginning to attract growing interest in research into on-line learning. (Fahy & Archer, 1999).

What is off-line learning? This question returns us to the more common, current practices in distance education where there is still a mix of analog & digital technologies. Some institutions offer home study courses where the student has the choice of enrolling in the on-line or the off-line version of the course. (Fahy & Archer, 1999, 16). Accessibility is still a key determinant for program development and enrolment. Only fifty percent of Canadian homes have access to the Internet. (Bélanger, 1999). Demographic, socioeconomic and cultural characteristics remain the chief factors in determining the mix of media and methods employed by distance educators. Most institutions are still combining a variety of methods to teach students at a distance. The mix will usually include both on-line and off-line practices. Examples include viewing videotapes, at home, telephone tutoring, sending assignments and returning marks in the mail, audiographics, videoconferencing, email, chat rooms, and so on.

The new media paradigm beckons. As we approach … or perhaps, as we race toward the next millennium, we find ourselves caught up in a digital imperative. Distance educators are abandoning telecourses in favour of Web-based courses. Publishers are offering Web sites and Web course templates at no cost to professors who select their textbooks. Many colleges and universities require their students to have computers and IP accounts as a condition of enrolment. More and more employers are demanding IT literacy of graduates entering the workforce. Governments are frantically developing enabling policies and making large grants available to promote connectivity and knowledge-based economies (KBE) as strategies for gaining position in the global marketplace. Traditional marketing & transactions for goods and services are moving to Webcasting and e-commerce.

In sum, government, business and industry, and consumers alike, are pushing towards the new media society. By the end of the 1999 school term, Canada had become the first country in the world to have all classrooms connected to the Internet. (Hull, 1999). By 2001 all Canadian homes will be connected, and by 2002, most delivery to Canadian schools will be on-line. (Bélanger, 1999). The British Columbia Ministry of Education is one example of a jurisdiction that is implementing a plan to establish a complete set of on-line services for resourcing schools: from downloading Instructional Resource Packages, to e-commerce transactions at the virtual warehouse, to streaming video (when bandwidth permits).

When Bandwidth Permits

The new media society is defining a new type of conspicuous consumption, where instant gratification is measured in clicks. The fundamental macro issue for distance education will always be access to educational opportunities, but the issues for new media delivery are at the more micro level of interactivity. As suggested above, universal access is more or less in hand. Our expectations are now best described by the term, "on demand". Information and communications technologies (ICT) put us in a constant state of readiness. Learning on demand means that I can log on to my course at home, at work, in my hotel room, at a friend or relative’s house, in the hospital, or at the country cottage, at any time of the day or night. Web course designers also want to create opportunities for students to access information in the easiest ways possible while they are on-line. Information on-screen should be presented in ways that are immediately accessible with a minimum number of mouse clicks. We want the student to focus on the information, the learning objects, not on the technology, on distracting or cumbersome procedures such as moving between files, waiting for lengthy downloads or audiovisual synchronicity. Instructional developers have found that students want to be engaged with learning, they want cognitive and behavioural interaction. (Washburn, 1998). Further, Web courses generate higher enrolments than traditional, analog distance programs. The Internet knows no borders. Troubleshooting in a group of 1,000 distributed students presents far more serious management problems than in a traditional distance class of 100. Therefore, we need to keep Web-based courses simple: not too many clicks with an optimum quantity and arrangement of screen text, graphics, and waiting time.

The Internet is technologically challenged. The demand for high quality media rich content delivered synchronously or asynchronously on the Web, exceeds network capacity to supply. One of the greatest pressures on the Internet today is bandwidth. In February 1999 there were 12,500 courses available on-line in Canada. (Telecampus, 1999). It is ironic that in the post-industrial developed world we have been plagued by a sort of tautology where technologies are usually far more advanced than are our abilities to use them, yet today, new ITC technologies such as the Internet, are technologically limited. Far more could be done were we not restricted to transmission speeds of 28.8Kbps - 56Kbps. We are approaching a bottleneck in connectivity.

Deregulation in the North American telecommunications industry has helped create the conditions for telephone and cablevision companies to be competitors in the same markets. Telcos and cablecos are rapidly laying fibre for the deployment of high speed, high capacity networks. Canadians have been told that by 2003 they will all have broadband services to their homes. (Bjerring, 1998). This level of service means streaming video on-demand at the quality of high definition television (HDTV) Such clarity of images will be superior to anything we are currently seeing in our homes or classrooms (DVD programs excepted. DVDs (digital versatile disks) have been entirely a consumer entertainment medium for the feature film industry, though very recently, DVD production has begun to occur for education and training applications.). This level of connectivity will bring all of the best qualities of film and video to the new media mix, and in addition, full interactivity. But what do Web course designers do until then? Distance education methodology has always been in a continuing state of change, utilizing available technologies until new ones become available. Innovative thinking leads to creative solutions, and there are currently, intermediate technologies that can address the new media educator’s needs for bandwidth. One example might be called hybrid video streaming, a way of navigating successfully through the bandwidth bottleneck.

There is a dearth of video in today’s Web courses, and where video is used, it is applied rather ineffectively. Images are typically small thumbnail sketches; they are jerky and fuzzy; they are slow to display and download; the files are too large to store locally. When bandwidth permits, none of these problems need exist, but in the meantime, the troublesome aspects of using video on-line have relegated this powerful instructional medium to the backbench in the educational tool shop. This unfortunate hiatus is leaving a wealth of instructional resources out of distributed teaching and learning. The quality of on-line instruction is the poorer for it.

MPEG Video

MPEG is the international standard for digital video. (See Digital Video for the Next Millennium http://sunsite.utk.edu/video/). MPEG1 has been universally accepted as the standard digital file format for on-line video streaming. (Mappin & Trautman, 1998). The essential characteristics of MPEG files are that they permit full motion viewing (30 frames per second); they are scaleable so that sound & image quality will be retained at different data rates (these rates will vary in relation to available bandwidth); and MPEG video is platform-independent. (Ryan, 1997). Readily available hardware and software, for example, current Windows or MAC operating systems, can display MPEG1 files. Minimum bandwidth required for streaming is T1, or 1.5 Mbps. MPEG1 video quality resembles that of VHS videotape. (See Zahn, Slimp, Jones et al, 1999).

Digital video file types that are in common use off-line in multimedia CD-ROM, or found on the Internet, are not MPEG files. The formats used, while simple and inexpensive to create, do not lend themselves well to interactivity. Because of the relatively poor quality of these video images, and because until recently, the cost of MPEG encoding has been prohibitive, digital video has been used rather sparingly. This need no longer be the case. Commercial MPEG transfer labs and reasonably priced encoding systems have now made MPEG video accessible for use in on-line learning.

In the age of the information highway we have come to a fork in the road and the way is now being paved for us to readdress the applications of instructional video. However, before discussing the re-application, and indeed, the new applications of video in distance education, one more piece of the digital puzzle must be recognized, namely, intellectual property rights. As with course development in the analog formats, rights must be acquired for digital use of content. Digital rights licensing, especially for video, is a very new phenomenon, and given the incipient nature of digital media, many producers and their agents are ill prepared for the conversion and distribution of their intellectual property in this new marketplace. The drafting of new copyright legislation and the emergence of producer collectives are facilitating content provision for new media. More and more digital resources are becoming available to populate our servers.

Let’s turn now to the hybrid solution of streaming full-screen, full-motion (FSFM) video in Web-based courses. At the time of writing, bandwidth limitations restrict FSFM video streaming to Intranet or LAN and WAN environments. Until broadband networks become generally available we cannot expect to see many media servers populated by MPEG video files. Instead, consider video stored and distributed on CD hard copy. One hour of MPEG1 video can be stored on a CD at the standard data rate of 1.5Mbps. Distribution of CDs to students is analogous to library sets of videotapes. CDs of partial or entire Web course content are finding their way to students To enhance access and to make hard copy options available to learners some distance education providers have begun to press their Web courses to CD for distribution in course packages.(See http://orderdesk.openschool.bc.ca/OMA/ ).Costs are decreasing for compression, CD burning, replication and distribution. Unlike programs on videotape, however, video information on CD is immediately accessible; it is searchable, and clips can be easily bookmarked for integration with other courseware components. In a word, digital video has interactive properties that are simply unavailable in analog video. When students click on a hot link while on-line with their Web course, they are immediately transferred near-line to the MPEG file resident in the CD-ROM drive. The video plays on the monitor where it can be easily sized by the student.

Interactive Video

What really separates analog from digital video is interactivity. Segments within video programs can be selected and indexed for speedy and accurate search and retrieval. Video clips can be indexed in any order with user-defined keywords, concepts and descriptions. The indexes can be modified at any time and saved as small text files. This "editing" of video programs is virtual: the program is not actually edited or cut. Sound is not separated from image. Pointers or bookmarks simply locate sections in the program. Copyright of intellectual property is protected.

This functionality with digital video represents a significant paradigm shift for educational televisual programming. Traditional viewing behaviour would have the learners watch the entire program, or they would be directed to sections referenced by running time on the videotape. The student might be directed to seek information from the program, synthesize the information and report on it in a text-based assignment. With digital video the student can access pre-established clips and can demonstrate learning by reporting back to the instructor in kind: the learner creates an arrangement of clips, complete with his or her own indexing and on-screen text. This information is saved as a small meta-data text file that can be sent to the instructor as an email attachment. On opening this file with the MPEG program, the instructor views and assesses the student’s video exercise. In this representation, video is transformed from a comparatively passive, one way medium to an active learning tool. Video has now become a very powerful courseware component.

VideoBase^TM

VideoBase^TM is a proprietary software interface that provides functionality to video in new media environments. (See www.sonoptic.com). This interface uses the metaphor of a book to order and classify video objects for instructional purposes. A three-tier information-retrieval scheme organizes the video program into Chapters, Sections and Indexes. These tiers are accessible through a Table of Contents. (Fig. 1).

The VideoBase^TM meta-data structure allows the user to create in and out points for clips, titling and screen notes, and indexing with custom classification. (Fig. 2). Screen sizes can be altered and filters can be employed for rapid search and play.

FIGURE 2. VideoBase^TM clip creation screen

VideoBase^TM reads the MPEG video program that is stored on a local hard drive or a CD. After the user creates the clips, he or she saves the work as a videobook file. At any time when this file is opened, modifications can be made to the videobook. If the instructor chooses to exercise control over the file, the learner may be limited to creating simpler sets of clips called playlists within a videobook file. A playlist file of clips can then be submitted as an assignment.

VideoBase^TM illustrates a new level of interactivity in education. This tool is unique in that it recognizes the importance of video in teaching and learning. It provides both a rationale and a means of bringing high quality video resources to the distance education enterprise. And as a device for deconstructing and reconstructing knowledge, it is a powerful tool for media literacy. Perhaps of greatest importance for producers, is that VideoBase^TM helps protect intellectual property rights. Clips cannot be created without first making the entire program available for viewing. Only after this first complete clip is established, can chapters, sections and indexes be created to form a videobook file. The complete program is always available to be played in its entirety, just as the producer created it. His video assets are protected.

Summary

Opportunities and issues in distance education are determined by access and interaction. Historically, the use of television in distance education has been characterized by the mass media practice of broadcasting content from one to the many. Later, the introduction of the videocassette gave students the flexibility to learn at their own pace. New technologies and their applications have expanded access to learning opportunities and have increased the opportunities for and the quality of teacher, student and peer interactions. As traditional television producers and broadcasters struggle to find interactivity, today’s instructional designers are creating flexible and customizable, resource-rich programs that promote active learning. The new media, best represented by the Internet and digital IT, offer the most radical improvements ever in accessibility to education. As we move through the transition from analog to digital media, the utilization of video will undergo a special transformation of hybrid applications until broadband networks connect all teachers and students.

References

United States Internet Commission (1999), State of the Internet: USIC’s Report on Use and Threats in 1999. See http://www.usic.org/usic_state_of_net99.htm

Massey, Christine & Curry Joanne (1999), Online Post-Secondary Education: A Competitive Analysis, Telelearning Network Inc., a report prepared for Industry Canada. See http://www.telelearn.ca/

Fahey, Patrick J. & Archer, Laurel M. (1999), On-line Learning: How Accessible? Open Praxis, Vol. 1/99 (15).

Bélanger, Pierre (June, 1999), La présence du radiodiffuseur public canadien sur Internet, Keynote Address at AMTEC Conference, Ottawa, ON.

Bjerring, Andrew K., 1999 Annual General Meeting Presentations, CANARIE. See http://www.canarie.ca

Hull, Doug (1999), Connecting Canadians: An Agenda for the Knowledge Economy & Society, 1999 Annual General Meeting Presentations, CANARIE. See http://www.canarie.ca

Washburn, Carol (10 March, 1998), Amount of text on a page, Archived Mailing List, See http://www.dev/logs/0097.html

Mappin, David & Trautman, Dave (June, 1998), MPEG Compression Basics, unpublished AMTEC conference paper, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Digital Video for the Next Millenium, (March, 1999), the Southeastern Research Association (SURA) white paper. See http://sunsite.utk.edu/video/

Telecampus, Tele Education, NB, Canada, See http://www.telecampus

Ryan, (Ed.) (1997), Real Time Video on the Internet, Natick: Applied Technologies Group. See www.techguide.com

Zahn, Steven, Slimp, Mickey, Jones, Don, et al, (1999), Digital Video: A Handbook for Educators, Instructional Telecommunications Council, Washington, DC.

Author Information

Gary Karlsen is the Director of New Media for Sonoptic Technologies Inc., (Saint John, Toronto, Vancouver). Sonoptic Technologies is Canada’s first full service new media company to specialize in digital formats and applications for educational and training video.

Before joining Sonoptic, Gary was Western Director for Magic Lantern Communications, the largest educational television and video distributor agency in Canada. Gary brings to Sonoptic, a breadth of knowledge and experience as educator, producer, manager of educational technology systems and services, sales and consulting.

Gary is a respected leader in the field of educational technology - he has served terms as President of the Pacific Instructional Media Association (PIMA) and the Association for Media and Technology in Education in Canada (AMTEC). He is also a member of the Canadian Association of Distance Education (CADE) and the International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE). He received his Masters in Education in Communications Media and Technology from the University of British Columbia.

© Copyright 1999. The author, Gary Karlsen, assigns to the University of New Brunswick and other educational and non-profit institutions a non-exclusive license 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 license to the University of New Brunswick 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. Any other usage is prohibited without the express permission of the authors.