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Abstract: The e-learning community has been producing and using video content for a long time, and in the last years,
the advent of MOOCs greatly relied on video recordings of teacher courses. Video annotations are information
pieces that can be anchored in the temporality of the video so as to sustain various processes ranging from
arXiv:1404.4607v1 [cs.CY] 16 Apr 2014
active reading to rich media editing. In this position paper we study how video annotations can be used in
an e-learning context - especially MOOCs - from the triple point of view of pedagogical processes, current
technical platforms functionalities, and current challenges. Our analysis is that there is still plenty of room for
leveraging video annotations in MOOCs beyond simple active reading, namely live annotation, performance
annotation and annotation for assignment; and that new developments are needed to accompany this evolution.
visualisation and analysis capabilities. Pedagogy is erative process, dedicated to the analysis of the au-
obviously an important domain for video annotation diovisual source through its enrichment with annota-
practices. First, any matter dealing with videos con- tions and the definition of appropriate visualisations.
tent as learning material, such as language or movie In a learning context, students may annotate the video
courses (Aubert and Prié, 2005; Puig and Sirven, material by taking notes, by themselves or collabora-
2007), can benefit from the usage of annotations on tively. Conversely, teachers may use the same tech-
a course support, as in VideoNot.es. Second, discus- niques for evaluating and grading videos produced by
sion about self-reflective activities can be enhanced students. And both learners and teachers can engage
by annotation-based tools. For instance, VideoTraces into a discussion about a video through annotations.
has been used for a long time in dance courses (Cherry Live annotation occurs during a live lecture,
et al., 2003; Bailey et al., 2009) for annotating dance which is recorded and annotated at the same time.
sessions. More generally, video recordings of learn- Students take notes during the lecture, and reuse these
ers presentations or interaction are used to implement notes as a basic indexing system when replaying the
self-reflection activities in classrooms (Rich and Han- recording. Teachers may also let students ask ques-
nafin, 2009), supported by a number of tools such as tions through annotations, and answer them at the end
VideoTraces, CLAS or MediaNotes. of the lecture (Bétrancourt et al., 2011).
It appears that a great number of practices have Performance annotation also implies video as a
been experimented in different contexts and applica- trace of a performance, be it recorded in a conven-
tion domains, from the 1990s VHS based reflective tional classroom or during a synchronous online ses-
activities to the more recent collaborative and online sion. The recording may already be augmented au-
video analyses. The experience accumulated on these tomatically by the capture of annotations containing
tools and practices could fruitfully be incorporated in information about the activity (sent documents, chat
e-learning. messages, etc). Based on this recorded video and ac-
tivity trace, students may annotate their own perfor-
mance, for self-reflection or for sharing an analysis
4 E-LEARNING PROCESSES with their teacher (Rich and Hannafin, 2009). Teach-
ers may as well annotate their own performance in
BASED ON VIDEO a self-reflective way, to improve their practice (ibid).
ANNOTATIONS Eventually, students may annotate a recorded course
for suggesting improvements or pointing out difficult
In order to assess in what measure we can leverage sections. The teacher can use that feedback when
the existing experience in video annotation systems preparing the next course or the next version of the
in an e-learning context, we organize these processes same course (Sadallah et al., 2013).
along four classes of scenarios. Eventually, in annotation for assignment, the
For active reading with annotations, video is a video is a material that has to be used to prepare
learning material whose content has to be assimilated an assignment (a feature movie, a recording of new
or evaluated. This task is carried out through an it- for media analysis, etc). The work may require stu-
dents to analyse some aspects of the video, and pro- dedicated tools we analyzed offer more features re-
duce annotations reflecting their analysis. The anno- garding the annotation process - such as interactive
tations are then later assessed by the teacher (Wong timelines, export of annotated data, sharing of anno-
and Pauline, 2010). Further, the annotations resulting tation, etc. - than MOOC platforms.
from the analysis may be reused to produce a new Thus, most of the solutions presented in Table 1
document, like an abstract or a video collage. At provide the possibility to develop pedagogical activ-
Columbia University, students use the MediaThread ities aiming to achieve active reading with annota-
platform (Bossewitch and Preston, 2011) to produce tion from students. Indeed, this is the main use of
critical video composition or critical multimedia es- such tools by MOOC students, who are seeking a
says, by combining annotations. The teachers then better understanding of the proposed video material.
assess their productions. Annotation-based active reading can be carried out in-
We can identify distinguishing features between dividually as well as collaboratively in the majority of
these different classes of scenarios, considering on the tools. This last possibility is even more signifi-
the one hand the status of the video, and on the other cant: as students cannot always rely on having their
hand the actors producing and using the annotations. doubts/difficulties solved by the teacher, collabora-
The annotated video can be a base learning material, tion with peers via annotation tools can increase their
such as a movie or a documentary to study, or can be understanding along with secondary benefits of devel-
a recording of a lecture (which the students may or oping cognitive capacities on learning from video, ob-
may not have seen live). It can also be the recording servational skills and increasing focus and attention.
of student contributions. The actors producing and/or As far as our other classes of scenarios are con-
using the annotations can be the students, the teach- cerned, performance annotation was not observed in
ers, student colleagues or teacher colleagues, or even the MOOC context although it could lead to an im-
the general public. provement of courses as it would be based on facili-
tated self-reflection for the teacher or, even better, if
made in collaboration with students. Tasks involving
5 ANNOTATION USES IN annotation as assignment were not observed either,
though it is clear that the possibility of critical explo-
E-LEARNING SYSTEMS ration where students must find evidences to support
their thinking could be used within the MOOC con-
Table 1 provides an overview of the various func- text, even so with the use of external annotation tools
tionalities related to video annotation offered by and peer evaluation (a well developed practice already
mainstream MOOC platforms3 or more specifically used regarding text assignments).
dedicated tools.
From our analysis, it appears first that features that
facilitate the comprehension of the discourse - such
as the possibility to adjust the video speed or acti- 6 SOME CHALLENGES
vate subtitles and transcriptions - are largely present
in MOOCs. These tools seem to be important in a It appears that video material and its use in
multicultural context where subtitles or transcription MOOCs are massive nowadays; nevertheless a more
are frequently produced in collaboration with student advanced use of video enrichments and more specif-
in the case of translations to other languages. Second, ically of video annotations is still not a reality. From
there is the use of interactive enrichments in MOOC the classes of scenarios we described earlier and
platforms, usually to have the video stop so that stu- the overview of the current situation of e-learning
dents answer a question in order to verify the under- and MOOC platforms, we would like to put for-
standing of what had just been explained. Third, if ward a number of challenges that we think should
many MOOC platforms allow adding comments on be addressed in future versions of e-learning systems,
video lectures, annotations refering to a part of the linked with annotation issues.
video are only possible via external tools. Fourth, the Manual production of annotations. Manual an-
notation processes raise specific ergonomic and us-
3 Based on courses available in late December 2013.
ability issues, all the more in the video domain where
Some platforms such as Udemy were not considered due playing the document may interfere with annotation
to the fact that they do not have an open access. This table
will be actualized for the final version of the paper. A more entry. The variety of targeted devices like mobile
detailed version is available on the web and constantly actu- phones exacerbates these issues. Moreover, as men-
alized on http://comin-ocw.org/video-annotations/platform- tioned above, annotations are also an ideal vehicle
features/. for collaboration activities around videos, in a syn-
Table 1: Annotation-related functionalities offered by mainstream MOOC platforms or dedicated tools
Matterhorn Player
Annotated HTML
Canvas Network
Khan Academy
Mediathread
Open2Study
VideoNot.es
VideoANT
Coursera
YouTube
Iversity
EdX
Multilanguage subtitles X1,2 X X1 X X X X
Transcription X X X X X X
Visualization
chronous (Nathan et al., 2008) or asynchronous way. kind of scale, it is important to take informed deci-
This brings some specifics issues, notably around the sions - and by opportunity - we now have the techno-
ergonomics of video co-annotation; as well as privacy logical and processing capacity to capture and analyse
(e.g. the level of shared information must be clearly the huge amount of information generated by thou-
displayed and tunable by users). sands of learners. The annotation process and the an-
Semi-automatic generation of annotations. notations themselves offer an additional source of in-
Most video-based e-learning systems use only plain formation for learning analytics at a finer scale, that
videos, sometimes fragmented into small indepen- could qualify as micro-analytics. Given the impor-
dent videos, providing only basic features. In or- tance of video resources, it is undoubtedly important
der to make these videos more accessible, e-learning to have precise feedback on its reception. This new
platforms should commonly provide features such as source of information could be used for example in
transcription or chaptering. Some projects such as course re-engineering (Sadallah et al., 2013).
TransLectures aim at providing automatic or semi- Annotation model and sharing. Numerous tools
automatic transcription of video, so that users may provide video annotation features, and many use cus-
use the transcription as entry points into the video, tom data models for storing annotation information
either for querying and finding specific fragments, or (Cinelab, Exmeralda). However, standardization ef-
as a simple navigation means. forts are underway to define more interoperable and
Rich media and hypervideos. Beyond the basic generic annotation models, able to encompass var-
video layout (side to side, overlay) that can be used to ious annotation practices on different source docu-
display the video material, annotations can be used to ments and to integrate well with the current seman-
enrich the video or to produce whole new documents, tic web efforts (OpenAnnotation). Let us remark that
such as hypervideos (Chambel et al., 2006) that are some universities, mainly in the US, are strongly com-
documents combining video and assets originating mitted to pushing forward and generalizing annota-
from annotations. Challenges here pertain to er- tion practices among students and faculty members,
gonomics, document modelling and (semi-)automatic building annotation ecosystems: Columbia (Bosse-
production, for instance through an annotation-guided witch and Preston, 2011), Stanford (Pea et al., 2004)
summarization. and Harvard.
Video annotations related learning analytics. All these challenges share common concerns.
With MOOCs, learning analytics have become a ma- First, mobile phones and tablets have become impor-
jor concern for all organisations, by necessity - on this tant platforms for consulting various resources, and
among them, pedagogical resources. It is important to Bossewitch, J. and Preston, M. D. (2011). Teaching and
propose the most complete experience on annotation- learning with video annotations. In Learning Through
enhanced e-learning platforms on all devices, and es- Digital Media: Experiments in Technology and Peda-
pecially on mobile ones, which have important con- gogy. Institute for Distributed Creativity.
straints in terms of display size and general capacity. Chambel, T., Zahn, C., and Finke, M. (2006). Hypervideo
and cognition: Designing video-based hypermedia
Second, copyright and licensing issues are even more for individual learning and collaborative knowledge
stringent, since they concern not only the video doc- building. In Alkalifa, E., editor, Cognitively Informed
ument (which has to be shareable to allow collabora- Systems: Utilizing Practical Approaches to Enrich In-
tive work), but also the produced annotations. Clear formation Presentation and Transfert, pages 26–49.
licenses for this additional data should be specified, Idea Group Publishing.
hopefully with a bias towards openness and reuse. Cherry, G., Fournier, J., and Stevens, R. (2003). Using a
Eventually, the question of accessibility - mainly for digital video annotation tool to teach dance composi-
sensory deficiencies - has to be considered as video tion. IMEJ of Computer-Enhanced Learning, 5(1).
annotations are clearly a means to provide a better Encelle, B., Ollagnier-Beldame, M., Pouchot, S., and Prié,
Y. (2011). Annotation-based video enrichment for
level of accessibility to video content (Encelle et al.,
blind people: A pilot study on the use of earcons
2011). and speech synthesis. In 13th International ACM
We have proposed four classes of scenarios il- SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessi-
lustrating how video annotations can be used in e- bility, pages 123–130, Dundee, Scotland.
learning contexts. To evaluate in what measure these Nathan, M., Harrison, C., Yarosh, S., Terveen, L., Stead, L.,
scenarios are feasible or already present, we have re- and Amento, B. (2008). CollaboraTV: making televi-
viewed a number of e-learning platforms (focusing on sion viewing social again. In Proceedings of the 1st In-
MOOCs) and tools, in order to identify existing anno- ternational Conference on Designing Interactive User
Experiences for TV and Video, UXTV ’08, pages 85–
tation features. It appears that if some support already 94. ACM.
exists, there is still plenty of room to efficiently imple- Nixon, L., Troncy, R., and Mezaris, V. (2013). TV’s future
ment the scenarios that go beyond simple active read- is linked: Web and television across screens 4th in-
ing, and a number of challenges related to video an- ternational workshop on future television at EuroITV
notation still remain. These challenges should be ad- 2013. In Proceedings of the 11th European Confer-
dressed in future versions of e-learning systems, and ence on Interactive TV and Video, EuroITV ’13, pages
we will tackle some of them in our future work on the 177–178. ACM.
COCo platform4 . Pea, R., Mills, M., Rosen, J., Dauber, K., W, E., and Hoffert,
E. (2004). The diver project: interactive digital video
repurposing. IEEE Multimedia, 11:54–61.
Puig, V. and Sirven, X. (2007). Lignes de temps: Involving
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4 The authors of the paper are involved in the COCo mental psychology using an interactive online video
platform. In Proceedings of the 2010 Conference of
project (Cominlabs Open Courseware) based in University
the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning
of Nantes, which is a recent initiative of the Cominlabs lab-
in Tertiary Education (ASCILITE).
oratory. The project goals are to build and animate a re-
search platform for both disseminating and promoting rich
media open courseware content.
A Webography
You will find here the URLs referenced in the article, in alphabetical order. Due to editing limitations,
they could not be included as hyperlinks in this version. The version of the article on the author’s website
http://www.comin-ocw.org/ has them properly hyperlinked.
Advene: http://www.advene.org/
Annotated HTML: http://www.stanford.edu/group/ruralwest/cgi-bin/drupal/content/building-annotated-video-
player-html
Anvil: http://www.anvil-software.de/
CLAS: http://isit.arts.ubc.ca/support/clas/
Canvas Network: https://www.canvas.net/
Cinelab: http://advene.org/cinelab/
Cominlabs Open Courseware: http://comin-ocw.org/
Coursera wiki page: https://share.coursera.org/wiki/index.php/Third-party Tools
Coursera: https://www.coursera.org/
EdX: https://www.edx.org/
EliteSportsAnalysis: http://www.elitesportsanalysis.com/
Exmeralda: http://www.exmeralda.org/
Harvard: http://annotations.harvard.edu/
Iversity: https://www.iversity.com/
Khan Academy: https://www.khanacademy.org/
Matterhorn Player: http://opencast.org/matterhorn/feature-tour/
MediaNotes: http://www.cali.org/medianotes
Mediathread: http://mediathread.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/
MotionView Video: http://www.allsportsystems.com/
Noldus: http://www.noldus.com/
Open2Study: https://www.open2study.com/
OpenAnnotation: http://www.w3.org/community/openannotation/
Transana: http://www.transana.org/
Translectures: http://www.translectures.eu/
VideoANT: https://ant2.cehd.umn.edu/
VideoNot.es: http://www.videonot.es/
VideoNot.es: http://www.videonot.es/
VideoTraces: http://depts.washington.edu/pettt/projects/videotraces.html
VideoTraces: http://depts.washington.edu/pettt/projects/videotraces.html
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/
Yovisto platform: http://www.yovisto.com/