BeyondWalls2009/roundtable
From Steeple
Also see http://search.twitter.com/search?q=beyond09
[edit] 1 Round table discussion
[edit] 1.1 Participants
Peter Scott, KMI, OpenUniversity.
Lynne O'Brien, Duke University.
Olaf Schulte, ETH.
Peter Robinson.
Paul Gerhardt. Used to teach at university, "extra mural studies", as if universities had walls. Used to work at BBC, then head of special archives project ("Creative Archive" project). How do we use content from archives? How do we reuse content, devlop creativity, share with others. Currently jiontly sharing a new jisc thnik tank in the use of film and sound within HE, and also within society through higher education. Increasingly think about reinventing something like the Open University, in today digital world.
Laura James, CARET, University of Cambridge. Newcoming to higher education technology. Background in consumer electronics. Represent the institutional view of podcasting in Cambridge. Cambridge recognises the importance of podcasting, with a new pro-vc led report under way.
[edit] 2 The Q&A session: What strategies does that panel think should be put in space, so that staff use podcasts, and students actually engage in participatory learning?
Questions to the panel.
(Person): What strategies does that panel think should be put in space, so that staff use podcasts, and students actually engage in participatory learning?
PR: That's the next challenge. We're close to having the technology in place, and now need to think about how to add value. We're not making the best use of this new form of collabrative video. Social constructivism, got to grapple with repurposing the granular pieces that the OU have. Getting students to create content, getting students to use content.
Andrew MIddleton: "Audio feedback" application.
LOB: Tools associated with podcasting need to put power back into the hands of students. Students have different backgrounds, have different ways of learning. Need to allow search tools, let students find the pieces of video they need, need to be able to download, put it onto their mediaplayer, ... students need to be empowered. Need to make a much better job at letting people find the content.
OS: Indexing video is the key. As the next step, we want annotations from students to the videos. So that we've got feedback from students, regarding the issues LOB mentioned. Students should be able to re-edit video, and then make the re-edited versions available. (Bjoern: Fluidity in video use, making video workflows easy.)
LOB: "Voice thread" application. Play back video, annotate, then search on the annotations.
LJ: Engaging students, embedding video in VLEs. Also, as the VLE beomces more social, need to have better audio/video integration.
PG: Content needs to be cleared to be reused, and if it is, and if you flag this up, then it open the floodgate.
[edit] 3 Access for disablity
Martin Cooper: Access for disability.
PR: Backend processing, etc. Building in transcripts.
Bjoern Hassler: Story about sound recording for disability access.
[edit] 4 Univ of Oxford question: Content
How can we nurture and inspire flag ship, high quality content?
PG: One of the real interesitng areas to explore, something the OU has done well, is not just to build content to courses being taught, but to build content that comes out of research (Bjoern: yes!), for instance Beagle mission. Content that comes out of research exercises must be fed back to the socierty that is funding this reaserch! Keeps the message in the hands of the people who are doing the research, ratehr than an message that comes through TV.
LJ: Don't forget that not all content is designed to draw other people in. Not all content is intended for mass audiences.
PS: We try to make life for students easier. So what we do isn't about marketing. Lectures are just an a way to get students to the library. Metadata standards for learning objects. We mustn't loose sign of the fact that we just talk about a subset of learning objects (ie video/audio vs. other learning objects). Interested in disruptive change. Training staff to be good 'interactors', rather than just good lecturers.
PR: Tips for podcasting. The best thing we can do, is to instigate as many world-experts talking to eachother, peer-to-peer. Tolkien and , talking face-to-face in the pub. Replicate this as podcasts. Get students talking to professors. Anecdote: Had an hour to interview particle physicist, so wikipedia is your friend, quickly swat the questions, then interview the person over skype. Just by asking a prof a naive question will make them reconnect with the subject matter.
[edit] 5 How will searching change?
Collaborative filtering. What are we doing about search facilities?
OS: This is partially already there. Also semantic web is important. Might also presentat suggestions about relations to real-world objects, or particular subjects, mentioning specific people (e.g. Darwin). This will be possible within the next 2-3 years.
LJ: http://www.talks.cam.ac.uk. Recommends random talks, which are often public. HSBC ads (good/bad/good/bad). Even if we have good metadata, it may not work.
Melissa: If we have educational searching, then we don't necessarily the same thing to be recommended, but we want something controversion to be recommended.
PG: How do we identify barriers to that search working across institutions?
[edit] 6 Recording student interaction
Students need safe spaces, where they can discuss freely, without impact on marking.
PS: Huge challenge. there's a lot of culture that needs to change, before people will be fully happy to do anything in the open. 10-15 years ago I had all my lectures recorded. Then just got the studetns to listen to the recording, wanting to use the lecture slots for other things. Didn't work out. Students and department wanted the lectures slots just to be used for lecturing. Now we give away things for free that used to be our crown jewels. More and more students also play in open spaces.
LOB: There are things that are reasonable to be kept private. A recording can hinder interaction. Students need to be able to choose the level of openness they want to have.
[edit] 7 WIll podcasting become widespread? Will it become the norm?
Todays technology will be come standard in the future. Will podcasting become widespread, such as use of power point? What tips can we give to academics?
OS: Not everybody will be using podcasts (say in 2 years time). But more and more people will. We would like to capture everything. Whether it is being used right now, is not important. We want to create a knowledge pool, that can be used in the future. If we had Einstein recordings from ETH, we'd be very happy. So we don't want to miss the next Einstein. We'll be intensifying the recording effort.
PR: Earlier session on ideas that professional broadcasters use, for presenting ideas short ideas. By contrast, most public talks aren't given by great orators.
LOB: We can ask whether students will listen to hour long lectures at all?
PS: There will be significant change. 15 years ago, I moved by lecture down to 35 minutes. Don't get sucked into a TV model, it's not what we do. How do we build better content objects for people to consume?
[edit] 8 Question from University student at Manchester Met.
Can we aggregate other content as well?
Can we have student aggregation as well?
PR: Of course, we can aggregate other documents.
OS: Student sshould tag the bits of videos they find interesting?
PG: Its interesting to look at how academics use platforms like YouTube, the very disciplined environment of just haveing 6 mins per video. Using ppt, text, and other things (Michael Vesh).
[edit] 9 Tom Hayes
yesterday we looked at 'diver software'.
How many distribution models do we need? Between yesterday and today, we counted 10-15 methods.
Bjoern Hassler: Suppose we have Steeple now, we get all great videos. Then funding runs out, and steeple folds. It doesn't matter - because you'll all be using a good metadata standard, and the next person can come along, and do sometihng intersting with that data. So portals don't matter, it's the infrasturuture, so tha tpeople can come along and do interesting things.
Ben Hawkridge: Really the distribution is not th eprimay issue. Think presevation first, make sure you're sorted in that way. Then think about dissemination. RSS is great, will be around, and can be leveraged.
PR: You can be Darwinian: Does this piece of media belong to a community, and is that community looking after it? If not, then that piece of media just fades away.
Tom Hayes: What do we do about filetypes?
PR: Great worry to the community. Need to take the formats that least lock you in. Standards are good things.
PG: BBC store has public money, to run the doomsday project. Entire sets of data were distributed on laser disks to schools around the country. So a big worry. But we're witnessing the death of myspace at the moment.
