Originally published in: Proceedings IADIS e-Learning conference 2010, Freiburg,Germany, p. 139-144

CAPTURE YOUR UNIVERSITY

Walther Nagler, Ypatios Grigoriadis, Christian Stickel and Martin Ebner Department Social Learning Computer and Information ServicesGraz University of Technology Austriawalther.nagler@tugraz.at

ABSTRACT

This paper reflects the experiences of four years of managing (lecture) recording activities at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz), its history, development and management, its increase and evaluation as well as its future trendswhich have already set into life by launching Austria’s first iTunes U platform for a university of technology in November 2009. The paper recommends a way of implementing podcasting and streaming into university daily routinefrom a didactical point of view as well as in practice. The pros and cons of screening, streaming, live-streaming or simplecapturing are being discussed in this context. Finally the next step to a university wide automated recording system istouched which is an unavoidable result of the successful way of podcasting TU Graz has decided to go.

KEYWORDS

podcast, streaming, recording, online, platform, mobile, iTunes U, university, informal learning, didactics

PODCASTING AT TU GRAZ

The revolution of the Web 2.0 enabled anybody with internet access to contribute personal data in a veryhandy way (O’Reilly, 2005). Since the Web has opened its doors for online editing all kind of media gluttedthat had been published by the private internet user. The beginning of podcasting goes back to those yearsand was first called

audioblogging

. The boom of podcasting is closely linked to the one of RSS technologyand the fact that this way of publishing audio files has been given the more catchy term podcasting by BenHammersley in 2004. Finally

iTunes

and

YouTube

leveraged podcasts to the mass. (iTunes is Apple’s program for managing media files online and offline; YouTube is the most used video sharing website owned by Google Inc.). By definition a

podcast

originally is an audio file transferred automatically via RSS to theuser in case the user submitted to that RSS-source (feed). Today the meaning of the term podcast did change.Audio as well as video files are generally called podcasts; whereas the term

videocast

has not gained that popularity yet. Very colloquial the term podcast may be used for any audio and video on the Web regardlesswhether it is supplied via RSS or not.At the University of Technology Graz (TU Graz) the use of multimedia for teaching and learning effortshas a long tradition as it has been part of TU Graz research by several institutes of informatics. But the aim torecord a lecture or to capture important parts of teaching content such as experiments in physics had always been the job of the institute itself that was interested in doing so. Besides filming of university events atspecial occasions the recording for teaching and learning purposes always seemed to be kind of reinventingthe wheel. Nevertheless adequate equipment could be loan from the

Computer and Information Services of the TU Graz

(CIS), the lack of a centralized service for recording often led to clumsy and individual

Originally published in: Proceedings IADIS e-Learning conference 2010, Freiburg,Germany, p. 139-144

procedures. This gap was closed in autumn 2006 by the Department for Social Learning (DSL) of the TUGraz offering its podcasting services to the entire university. In summer 2007 the DSL organized the firstAustrian podcasting conference within a community of interest of all four universities of Graz (

iUNIg

– Initiative for New Media of Graz Universities) (Ebner et al, 2008). In autumn 2008 DSL enriched its scope by adding streaming and live-streaming to its services. In November 2009 the TU Graz launched its own

iTunes U

portal to the public being the first Austrian university of technology to do so. Latest attempts has been started to aim for a university wide automated system of recording lectures.This paper not only outlines the different possibilities of audio and video media worked with at TU Graz but reflects their didactical aspects as well. The paper addresses the activities of the DSL in this context butdoes not cover additionally efforts done by individual institutes of the TU Graz apart from the services of DSL. To keep the paper simple and wherever it makes no important difference the term podcast will be usedin a broader sense not limited by the RSS-quality and comprising videocasts as well.

1.1 Basic Considerations about Didactics on Podcasting

There is no sense of introducing a new method or application to the teaching and learning communitywithout adding an adequate didactical scenario or at least some basic considerations and guidelines how touse them best and avoid the worst. The DSL always tries to do so by testing and evaluating different possibilities of realization by implementing such new methods into a couple of voluntary lectures or projects.First year’s experiences quickly taught us that podcasting can be profitably used for teaching and learning purposes at universities in multiple ways but always need a minimum of didactical presetting at least(Edirisingha & Salmon, 2007). Other research works corroborate this statement (Blaisdell, 2006; Dale, 2007;Towned, 2005). It is of no greater surplus broadcasting a live-stream to the public when the streamed lectureis part of a prepaid advanced training program where the attendees are told to join the event locally. Insteadthere could be a great interest on live-streaming some conference sessions.The following chapters describe the background, workflow and outcomes of the several capturingmethods the DSL undertakes as service features. Although these methods differ from each other basicallythey have some principles in common to be taken care of. The didactical scenario always depends on thequestion about the major aim of the recording: what is going to be recorded, duration and time of recordingas well as the target group; is it for teaching and learning purposes or archival ones, will it act just as shortcurrent information or shall it have commercial promotion character? The following very simple overall listof possibilities of recordings may help to find the main setting:

•

Recording/streaming of a whole lecture in classroom (or in the office)

•

Recording/streaming of short sequences (tutorial, instructions, definitions …)

•

Recording for strictly archival scopes

•

Recording as a part of students (collaborative) work and marking

•

Shooting of short clips and movies (advertisement, public purposes …)For the recordings they can be done as audio only or video, as screening with or without video.Furthermore it must be decided whether the recording shall be a live-stream or not. Apart from these anyrecording can be published within a free or locked environment for enrolled people only. When these basic parameters are defined the settings including the hardware and software as well as post processing methodsand release details can be fixed.

1.2 General Possibilities and Workflow of Podcasting at TU Graz

With the formation of DSL in autumn 2006 as a further department of the CIS the e-learning platform called

TU Graz TeachCenter

(TUGTC) has been set into being. It has served as the main central environment for teaching and learning processes at TU Graz since then (Ebner, 2008). The TUGTC bases on the so called

WBTmaster

-system that has been developed and used by the team of Prof. Nikolai Scerbakov at the

Institute for Information Systems and Computer Media

of TU Graz (IICM) since the later 1990s (Maurer &Scerbakov, 1996). In autumn 2008 the (live-) streaming service has been started off by installing a portablestreaming server and by launching its corresponding internet platform

. The system chosen is from the

http://curry.tugraz.at – last visited March 2010

Originally published in: Proceedings IADIS e-Learning conference 2010, Freiburg,Germany, p. 139-144

Canadian company

ePresence

. Latest in November 2009 TU Graz opened its own portal on Apple’s iTunesU platform as the first Austrian university of technology. All contents can be subscribed to and consumed for free. Nearly all of the recordings done or hosted by DSL are being published on one of these three portals.Most of them are uploaded to the TUGTC to become a lecture content for learning purposes. Even a lot of streaming records that are displayed on the streaming platform are linked to the TUGTC as well as a coupleof videos presented on the iTunes U portal. Subject to the agreed scenario the best platform is chosen.Even though the output format and used publishing platform is actually not limited to the recordingsettings the output needs special attention to be turned to. The fact that mobile devices become more andmore powerful, extensive and popular even for learning efforts (Campell, 2005) the output formats shall beconsidered to fit that challenge. Mobile phones became small computers for online multimedia content andcommunication. Apple’s products spread all over the world, set trends and even change the development of future devices lasting. Netbooks gain a boom and social platforms like

Facebook

have gone far beyondsimple platforms for managing private or business relationships; they have mutated into mashup landscapes providing content being added by users’ choice from any embeddable source even a streamed lecture.Besides those ways of very formal processes members of DSL make use of the informal ways the Web2.0 revolution entails not only for private but also for business reasons. It has become very easy to share reallife experiences at the moment with the mass or a distinguished community with no additional costs. Whether it is a video taken via mobile phone being live streamed on a free online platform such as

Qik

vimeo

and

AudioBoo

to catch the power of a situation acted on impulse or to protocol spots of an ongoing presentationor discussion at a conference; the reasons and range of use are only limited to one’s own imagination. In November 2009 DSL (in cooperation with iUNIg and German EduCamp founder) organized the firstEduCamp in Austria. It was not only the first EduCamp in Austria but it was the first German speaking,educational Camp to be completely broadcasted live on Internet. All needed for that was a set of cameras andmicrophones each connected to ordinary laptops that have Internet access to the DSL-account on

Ustream

. In principle it even could had been done only using mobile phones, if high quality would not had been a limitingfactor.