Workshop Resources Assignments Home Credits		Workshop 5: Trends in Distributed Learning and Online Lecture Opportunities Pre-Workshop Assignment: 1) Prior to the workshop you should visit the website for the Washington University Graduate Online Lecture Project .  Once there you should view the online multimedia presentation "Graduate Online Lecture Overview" produced by Liberman Fellow David Callon.  David Callon's presentation will give you a brief overview of the project. 2) Next you should view either view the Graduate Online lecture, "Fueling the Brain: a Comparative Study of Cerebral Metabolism in Humans and Other Mammals",  produced by GOL participant Jason Kaufman, or the Graduate Online lecture, "Territorial Currents: Waterways and River Gods" produced by GOL participant Felicia Else.  As you watch the lecture think about how you would go about communicating your specialized research to a broad audience. Click here for directions on viewing the Graduate Online Lectures. Workshop Goals: In this workshop we will identify new ways to teach learning communities beyond the classroom: life-long learners, alumni, and others beyond the traditional campus.  We will consider  the pedagogical, technical and institutional issues that shape our use of  the web to distribute research and teaching materials and create educational experiences.  Such considerations will inform the proposal we draft to produce a brief online multimedia presentation.  What You Create:  A draft of a proposal for your own brief online multimedia presentation on a topic of your graduate research. Workshop Outline: I. Introduction to Distributed Learning      A.  What is the Meaning of Distributed Learning?        B.  Why is  Knowledge About Distributed Learning Important to Graduate Students?        C.  What Types of Transmission Technologies can be Used for Distributed Learning? II. Examples of Online Multimedia Presentations      A.  The Internet Poetry Archive produced by the University of North Carolina        B.  The Neurolist Cyber-Lecture " Two Cases of Weakness " from the Medical College of Georgia        C.  Robert Olen Butler's Inside Creative Writing at Florida State University        D.  Oxford University's Virtual Chemistry Laboratory        E.  Princeton University's Alumni Development Lecture        F .  Becoming Human : Paleoanthropology, Evolution and Human Origins        G.  Washington University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Graduate Online Lecture Project III. An Overview of the Graduate Online Lecture Project      A.  What is the Graduate Online Lecture Project?       B.  Why Should you Become Involved in the Graduate Online Lecture Project?       C.  How do I Conceptualize a Graduate Online Multimedia Presentation?       D.  How do I create a Graduate Online Multimedia Presentation at Washington University? IV. Postworkshop Follow-up

I. Introduction to Distributed Learning

A. What is the Meaning of Distributed Learning?

For the purposes of this workshop, the term Distributed Learning will be defined as distributing research and teaching materials outside of the traditional university walls to students and colleagues.

Notice that this encompasses many different forms.  A traditional correspondence course would fit this description because the instructors mail the teaching materials to their students.  You can consider this workshop an exercise in distributed learning because some of the content of the workshops is delivered on-line and we can converse via the newsgroup outside the classroom.

It is possible now to take an entire course over the web in which you may never meet with your fellow students or the instructor face to face.  It is also possible to complete an entire degree in this fashion.  For example, visit the website of Jones University , the first fully accredited online university, or Walden University , an online university that specializes in graduate education.

We will focus today's workshop on the web-based distribution of teaching and research materials.  We will spend the last part of the workshop discussing the Graduate Online Lecture Project the Washington University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is undertaking.  An online lecture can be used to distribute course content to students or to inform the academic community or potential employers about your research.

B. Why is Knowledge About Distributed Learning Important to Graduate Students?

The Washington University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences believes that having some knowledge of distributed learning is a major asset to graduate students as they go onto the job market.  Many universities are spending large sums of money looking into the possibilities provided by distributed learning technology.  As you saw yesterday, having some basic knowledge in this area could distinguish you on the job market.

Another reason why being familiar with distributed learning is important is because universities are still debating how to adopt these new technologies.  If we, as teachers, have an informed opinion on how to use these new technologies to enhance learning we can help frame the terms of the debate.

An additional advantage of creating an online presentation is that you become skilled at providing an interpretation of your research that is accessible to a wider audience.

C. What Types of Transmission Technologies can be used for Distributed Learning?

II. Examples of Online Multimedia Presentations

Now we are going to do a brief show and tell of different multimedia technologies. We will first focus on multimedia technologies you may encounter on the internet or at your first teaching postion. Later, we will explore some of the multimedia technologies available at Washington University.

To learn more about the multimedia resources we have here at Wash U, see the section of workshop 3 on Learning the Skills beyond Netscape to enhance your course site

A. The Internet Poetry Archive produced by the University of North Carolina

Instructions to view (30 seconds)

1. Click on the Internet Poetry Archive link above.
2. Click on the picture of Seamus Heaney.
3. Click on the poem "Song".
4. Click on the link Song.
5. RealPlayer will open and play this RealAudio file.
6. When the poem is done, close RealPlayer and return to the workshop 5 page.

What did we just see?

This site is an archive of the poetry of some famous poets. An archive could simply  include only the text of the poems. To make the site more interesting, a picture of the author and audio files containing a reading of the poem have been added.

What do you think is the value added by including sound? One great thing about this site is that by simply adding an audio file, students can now hear the poets themselves reading their own poems. This gives the works  a personal touch and allows students to notice subtle changes in tone and inflection that might affect the poem's interpretation.

Does the above benefit warrant the use of this technology?  Depending upon your critical and pedagogical philosophy, you might reach different conclusions.  For a dissenting opinion on the issue of the vlaue of the oral performance of poetry, see Adam Kirsch's article "Hearing Aid" at Slate.com .

Notice that there would probably be little value added to having a video file showing the author reading the poem as compared to an image of the author with an audio file.

Technology

Notice that the audio is played as a RealAudio file via RealPlayer .

What would it take for you to make a site like this yourself?  You already know how to insert text and images onto a webpage.  The next step would be to insert the audio.  We can do this using the program Sound Recorder and a microphone (stored in the GradLab).  The Sound Recorder program creates an uncompressed .wav audio file.

.Wav files, however, tend to be rather large and difficult to download. For this reason, UNC used RealPlayer as it can compress audio files to make them easier to download.  Users can download the RealPlayer   for free to listen to RealAudio and view RealVideo files.  You can also download for free the RealProducer software that can convert audio and video files (such as a .wav file) into RealAudio and RealVideo for the Internet.

What is the catch?  The catch is that a RealServer must be purchased to house your RealAudio and RealVideo files.  This may entail considerable expense for the institution.Washington University does have a RealServer.

B. The Neurolist Cyber-Lecture " Two Cases of Weakness " from the Medical College of Georgia

Instructions to view (view for 3 minute)

1. Click on the "Two Cases of Weakness" link above.
2. Listen for about 3 minutes.
3. Close the RealPlayer window.
4. Click on the "Back" button to return to the workshop 5 page.

Who is the audience of this lecture?  The audience can be divided into at least two parts:

• those seated in the room while the lecture is being given.
• web-based viewers like us

It seems as though the producers of these web lectures are much more aware of the web-based portion of the audience. A great deal of thought was devoted to considerations such as background, colors, and clothing.  I would say these lectures are now designed primarily for the web-based audience, with a traditional audience there to view the taping.

In addition, the use of the screen to the right of the lectures for notes adds extra value beyond the mere lecture.

Technology

This series of lectures is also an example of RealPlayer .  Notice that this example incorporates both RealAudio and RealVideo.  Keep in mind that video recording requires additional staff and resource support. These two considerations might also be  reasons that the previous poetry archive chose not to incorporate video into their multimedia presentation.

C. Robert Olen Butler's Inside Creative Writing

Instructions to view

1. Click on the link to Inisde Creative Writing above.
2. Scroll down the screen to find the calendar from October
3. Click on the link below "Archived Webcast" for October 30.  If you are on campus or have a network connection (or cable modem), choose the "DSL/Cable/LAN" link.  If you have a telephone modem, choose the "56k Modem" link.  Note:  If at all possible, view this lecture using a fast connection, and not a standard telephone modem.

This site shows a Pulitzer Prize-winning author as he works to create and then edit a story based on an old postcard.  Who is the audience?  His creative writing students, but also anyone interested in the process of writing.  The unique aspect of the video is the video-within-video where the viewer is able to see both Butler working at his computer and the actual computer screen as he types.  Does this add value over seeing merely the computer screen with a voice-over?

Technology

Like the Neurolist lecture above, this site uses Real Video.

D. Oxford University's Virtual Chemistry Laboratory

Instructions to view

1. Click on the Virtual Chemistry Laboratory link above.
2. On the bottom left corner, click on the experiment "Metal ions in solution".
3. This is the introduction to the experiment, click on "More".
4. This tells you what to look for in the experiment, click on "More".
5. Click on "Go to the first experiment".
6. A question will appear, choose the third answer.
7. Click on "Go!"
8. Click on the bottle on the far right.
9. A Quicktime movie of the experiment will be played.
10. Answer the question by choosing the third answer.
11. Click on "Go on to the next stage".
12. Another QuickTime movie will play and a series of questions will appear.
13. From the drop-down menus, select "Go", "GSAS:workshop5".
14. This will return you to the workshop 5 page.

This site has viewers follow a tutorial to allow them to perform chemistry experiments.  It provides video of experiments being performed and uses interactive web-exercises to reinforce the main ideas of the experiment.

What do you think is the value added of the video?  How about the web exercises?

Technology

The video of the experiments is played using Apple's QuickTime .

E. Princeton University's Alumni Development Lecture

Instructions to view

1. Click on the Alumni Development Lecture link above.
2. Next click on  "continue".
3. Allow the buffering to finish, then listen to the introduction.
4. When the introduction is finished click on "continue".
5. Again click on "continue".
6. Listen to the discussion, then click on "continue".
7. View the discussion of the map and then close the lecture to return to workshop 5.

Who is the audience of this site?  It is alumni of Princeton University.  How does this fact make this page different from presentations such as the preceding Virtual Chemistry Lab? Since this page is targeted towards Princeton alumni, it  has to be visually appealing to a broad range of viewers.  It should have more of an entertainment value than some of the other examples we have discussed.

Technology

This site required a great deal of time and money to create.  According to Princeton, even with their faculty and staff providing their services for free, this lecture still cost more than $40,000 to produce. In fact, it was eventually abandoned as it became too cumbersome to download. It also uses RealPlayer.  Notice that it combines RealAudio with still images and animation as opposed to RealVideo.

F. Becoming Human : Paleoanthropology, Evolution and Human Origins

Instructions to watch

1. Click on the link Becoming Human link above.
2. Click on the "Journey through the story of human evolution" at the upper right..
3. Return to the workshop 5 page.

Who is the audience of this site?  A general educated audience.

Technology

This online lecture was created using Macromedia's Flash .  This software is available for graduate student use in the GradLab .  Flash has a lot of nice features and can be used to animate objects, such as buttons and images.  Flash is also capable of incorporating QuickTime movies into a presentation.  Note that although Flash was designed to allow users to view Flash projects over standard phone lines, the Beoming Human Site, due to its complexity, strongly recommends a high-speed interent connection.

G. Washington University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Graduate Online Lecture Project

Instructions to view lectures

1. Click on the link above to view the Online Lecture Project homepage.
2. Click on the Graduate Online Lectures button.
3. Click on the "To the lectures" link.
4. Once again click on "To the lectures" in the lower righthand corner.
5. You will now see a list of lectures.  To view, just click on the one you are interested in.

We are going to spend the next part of the workshop focusing in more detail on how you can produce your own online multimedia presentation at Washington University as a part of the GSAS Online Lecture Project.  Our focus will be on using Flash 5.  Why Flash?  It has been determined by the GSAS Online Lecture Project to be a time and cost effective means to produce a brief online lecture based on the resources currently available to graduate students in Arts and Sciences at Washington University.  Flash 5 is available for graduate student use in the GradLab: Graduate Student Lab for Teaching and Technology (Eads 003).

A. What is the Graduate Online Lecture Project?

David Callon, a Liberman Graduate Fellow leading the Graduate Online Lecture Workshop and a doctoral candidate  in English, has overseen the continuing development of the Graduate Online Lecture Project on creating a second series of summer web workshops that are available to graduate students.

The GOL is part of a broader technology initiative started by Dean Robert E. Thach and Associate Dean Elaine Berland of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1995 in order to enhance the professional development of doctoral students by preparing them for leadership in an increasingly technology intensive, global world.  This preparation benefits individual graduate students and graduate education alike.  Graduate students have knowledge to share with a variety of audiences, including academic colleagues, prospective employers, prospective graduate students, alumni, and lifelong learners. Communicating these stories creatively using online media provides a way for them to raise their own professional profiles together with those of their departments, the Graduate School and Washington University at large.

The GOL provides the training and resources necessary for showcasing quality online research in ways that demonstrate a critical knowledge of how technology informs pedagogy and research.  At root, this project is about graduate students from a variety of disciplines collaborating and sharing knowledge with one another while developing professional skills for communicating highly specialized research to audiences in and beyond their academic fields.

Below are some examples of online lectures.  We will preview clips from each lecture.

Examples:

1. "Graduate Online Lecture Overview" by David Callon

2. "Fueling the Brain: a Comparative Study of Cerebral Metabolism in Humans and Other Mammals" by Jason Kaufman

Jason Kaufman's lecture on the the relative anatomical and metabolic differences between human and other mammal brains is a fine example of the possibilities of Flash presentations for self-directed study and non-linear organization.  This lecture offers a  balance between graphic and audio elements, and allows each viewer/listener to determine his/her own path through the presentation.

3. "Territorial Currents: Waterways and River Gods" by Felicia Else

This art history lecture by Felicia Else uses Flash to explore the use of water imagery in the visual art of Sixteenth-Century Florence.  Felicia's creative use of photo images immerses her audience in the Florentine environment, and highlights the specific works, and portions of those works, that are most relevant to her project in an appealing and interactive visual context.

B. Why Should you Become Involved in the Graduate Online Lecture Project?

Producing an online multimedia presentation through the Graduate Online Lecture project would provide evidence of your level of technical expertise.  This is something that employers are increasingly interested in, as we discussed in Workshop 4.

As Liberman Graduate Fellow David Callon detailed in his online presentation, "Graduate Online Lecture Overview", a Graduate Online Lecture is the most recent addition to the common forums for academic communication such as classroom lectures, conference presentations, or scholarly publications.  All of these make use of some form of technology such as chalk, an overhead projector, a podium, a microphone--communication technologies that have become nearly invisible to us through generations of continual use.  These technologies are integral components of an academic performance rooted in the virtue and promise of connecting individuals with one another and with useful, accessible information.   Seen in this light, an online lecture is an extension of the academic work for which we, as graduate students, are preparing.

Of course, new communication media such as the Internet demand a re-examination of how we think about the relationships of lecturer and audience, content and medium.  Effective online lectures make use of an interplay of text, sound, and visual design in the attempt to communicate highly complex, specialized research to the specialist and non-specialist alike.  Creation of an Online Lecture is also an opportunity to develop communication skills for reaching broader audiences.  Thus, learning the public communication and technology skills needed to produce an online multimedia presentation is a part of the professional development training available here at Washington University.

C. How do I Conceptualize a Graduate Online Multimedia Presentation?

1. General Steps for Graduate Students to Develop an Online Multimedia Presentation

Developing an online lecture will require preparation and planning.  Therefore, it is best to consider a timeline before you begin.  The following steps are good general guidelines for any project like this one, whether undertaken at Washington University as a graduate student, or at some later point in your career:

1. Determine your goals (institutional, pedagogical, personal).
2. Determine your target audience.
3. Determine your topic by defining a central idea or concept to be presented.
4. Further define your topic by breaking it down into components, then decide what medium might best enhance the presentation of each component.
5. Evaluate your users' technical capabilities.
6. Evaluate your technological needs to produce and distribute your lecture.
7. Compare and test software packages that seem suitable.
8. Write proposal and concise script for your lecture.
9. Obtain necessary skills to use your chosen software.
10. Gather materials (text, images, etc.) and determine copyright.
11. Produce Online Lecture.
12. Distribute Lecture.

2. Collaboration Inside and Outside your Institution: Technical and Institutional Support

A significant factor in determining how a graduate student will produce and distribute an online lecture will be the resources at your University--technical and personal.  Here are some general descriptions to help inform your choices about producing and distributing web-based lectures:

Software Support: You may be asking the university to invest in a product from a small company whose future is uncertain, or in a large company whose commitment to the future development of the product is in doubt.  If the worst happens and the company fails to continue to develop the product, will your data and applications be lost when you transfer to a different product?  Or is the architecture "open," or "closed;" is it "cross platform"?

Support Considerations: Identify personnel on campus with whom you will need to collaborate to implement your distributed learning course.  These may include: teaching center, a computing organization, instructional technology group, graduate school, or other academic administrative offices.

Training Considerations: Identify the training you and your students may need in order to distribute and access your content via your chosen technology.

Copyright Considerations: Identify that part of your content which may require notification of or permission from original sources.

3.  Some useful links in developing an online lecture:

(More links and descriptions can be found on the WebWorkshops Resources Page)

Wash U Language and Instructional Media Center Teaching Resources

Distance Learning Resource Network

Graduate Online Lecture Project

Yale Style Manual

About.com Guide to Web Design

Webmonkey

D. How do I create a Graduate Online Multimedia Presentation at Washington University?

This summer interested students can participate in a Liberman workshop led by Graduate Liberman Fellow David Callon designed to facilitate the development of a series of graduate student online multimedia presentations using Flash 5 software.

Why Flash?  One of the primary reasons for using the Flash 5 software that a large portion of the  intended audience of these lectures is off-campus.

IV. Postworkshop Follow-up

If you are interested in pursuing the production of an online lecture the Graduate School would like to help.  Please mention your interest on your workshop evaluation and call Dean Berland at 935-7355.