Institutional workflow diagram

From Steeple

[edit] Podcasting Tasks and Dependancies

Educational video and audio is undergoing a step change, posing new requirements on institutional digitisation workflows that have high overlap between institutions. The availability of affordable recording techniques as well as new distribution channels has changed the way in which audio and video visual material is used in UK higher education. It is important to note the processes supporting effective use of audio and video (“podcasts”) and the emergent technologies that can streamline complex audio-visual encoding activities through enterprise level services. Effective centralised institutional work will relieve the burden placed on departmental support structures and lead to long term savings from the reduced time and effort in creating audio visual materials for teaching, research and outreach.

Drivers for change:

• Reducing costs for media processing and media management
• Easier delivery of media into channels important to the institution
• Supporting and documenting best practice for
  • Sustainability of the architecture
  • Ensuring longevity of institutional media investments

Digitisation workflow covers:

• Scoping, requirements, use cases
• Legal policies and processes,
• Requirements for public access to video/audio
• Private access to video and audio via LMS or VLE
• Media encoding engines
• Service management
• Client relations
• Training and support
• Evaluation, usage reporting and dissemination

The following diagram is a chart of tasks involved in podcasting at an institutional level and a series of dependancies that define their ordering. Not all tasks are essential nor do you have to start at task 1 - the latest entry point is likely to be task 13. This chart is not linear and the arrows indicate dependancies - tasks point to tasks that are dependant upon them completing before they can complete. Most tasks can run concurrently.

Error creating thumbnail: Invalid thumbnail parameters

Error creating thumbnail: Invalid thumbnail parameters

Whilst this collection of tasks is not exhaustive, this does help to clarify some of the main steps taken to get a podcast from conception to delivery.

Let us briefly work through the tasks, but from delivery to conception:

• 31 - To be able to manage or report on your podcasting you need statistics such as the number of downloads for a given piece of content, who and where your audience are located and their usage patterns.
• 30 - Ultimately the aim is to have the content downloaded by subscribers or ad-hoc users.
• 29 - To take full advantage of podcasts subscribing to the feed is a key user task.
• 28 - It is possible that you will need to be able to remove podcasts from within your system.
• 27 - Publishing the podcast and feed to Apple iTunes U is a simple technical process that yields exposure to a captive worldwide audience.
• 26 - Including tasks 25, 24 and 22 this relates to the quality control aspects included in the Apple iTunes U contract and due diligence on behalf of the institution. This final step is the last check before material is made available for inclusion within iTunes U.
• 25 - Quality control task looking at playback issues for the content.
• 24 - Within our devolved system responsibility for content quality and copyright and permission ultimately fall upon the sponsoring department and a nominated representative.
• 23 - Participants may need to review publishable outputs, often before they will consent to public release.
• 22 - All speakers within a podcast sign a release form permitting the university to use their recording.
• 21 - Preview the content may require a copy on DVD or CD (or via private network) so that the presenter and sponsoring department can review.
• 20 - Another outlet for publishing is the institutional web portal...
• 19 - ...As well as publishing the content locally on a related project/subject specific website.
• 18 & 17 - This two stage process requires 17 (Creating a Podcasting Feed) if this new content does not belong in another existing container, and 18, the actual creation of an RSS metadata record that can be published within the podcasting feed. Publishing the URL allows users to subscribe for automatic downloads of new content.
• 16 - Part of the metadata related to items and feeds is that of a visual icon, or Album Art. Typically this is a square JPEG/GIF/PNG image around 300px by 300px.
• 15 - Early on in the process you can begin collecting the metadata that will be associated with the content. This may be as trivial as a Title and Presenter, but can encompass a much wider range of data fields.
• 14 - Processed content needs to be uploaded to a website for hosting and distribution. Combining the URL to access the content with the metadata (15) and album art (16) in tasks 17 & 18 is what effectively creates a "podcast".
• 13 - Processed content refers to final edits of a piece of content compressed down into a suitable format for distribution. These file(s) will need to be stored somewhere, likely before they are uploaded to their final hosting location.
• 12, 11, 10 & 9 - These four tasks collectively describe automated activities that transform a final edited piece of content into a set of files suitable for final distribution. Less work is typically done on audio only content (12) than on video, where resizing of content and combining it with a suitable marketing trailer/short-movie is followed by the compression stage.
• 8 - For many systems, the starting point is receiving a large, high quality version of the content to be published. Typically this content will need archiving for security and reuse purposes.
• 7 & 6 - To produce effective and high-quality content a level of editing is usually required. The degree of work done at this stage is highly dependant on your aims, resources and constraints.
• 5 - Podcasters will typically want to keep a copy of their original material, as at later dates, alternative editing may be desired.
• 4 - Whilst many will now use technologies that automatically produce digital content from the recording process, there is a need (for example with historical content) to convert analogue formats to digital media.
• 3 - The act of creating content is the recording of a performance/presentation.
• 2 - If you have resources that can be used by podcasters to aide their work, this step accounts for that activity.
• 1 - To aide planning (such as media calendars etc) it helps to know what material may be making an appearence within the final output systems. This step acknowledges that you can start to track this content even before an actual recording is made.

Depending on the degree of centralisation and the levels of support your institution may be able to offer, is the number of entry and exit points for the different stakeholders within this process. Not all podcasts flow from task 1 through to 31 and those providing or supporting these users should be aware that surprise additions can appear out of the woodwork as well as promising content being withdrawn due to lack of consent, and a variety of other scenarios.

We hope you will find this useful as a discussion document as well as a starting point to compare with your own processes.