Picturing the Path to e-Learning MSc IT in Education

Digital video offers a real breakthrough in the development of truly effective learning environments as it enables the distribution of compelling, visually stimulating content on the Web

Picturing the Path to e-Learning

MSc IT in Education

Picturing the Path to e-Learning 1

Cathal O Connor 1

Abstract 3

Introduction 4

Background 5

Literature Review 6

Best Practice 6

Visualization Techniques 7

CAVERN 11

The Electronic Visualization Laboratory 12

Professor Chang 14

Internet2 16

Recent studies 17

Methodology & Design of Artefact 19

Introduction to Artefact 19

Overview 24

Retrieve Video 26

Videos Database 28

Feedback 30

Findings 31

Discussion 34

Conclusion 35

Appendix 36

References 38

Digital video offers a real breakthrough in the development of truly effective learning environments as it enables the distribution of compelling, visually stimulating content on the Web This new technology will be key to developingsuccessful e-learning systems Specifically, interactive digital video offers a new way to create constructivist, project-based learning Because video can now be stored in digital format (providing rich possibilities for both archiving and manipulation) it offers itself as a new medium for the development of learning content that can be embedded in other technologies enabling, in turn,the development of new learning paradigms

This leads to possibilities for both real-time learning and of archiving of visual learning content for use in research and development in education Digital video can be used in research, in analysis of how people learn, and the

outcome of such research should be focused on the learner knowing how to learn The learning opportunities offered by this visual medium are further enhanced by the fact that people are most familiar with it and by its increasingprominence on the Internet as an important content type

The opportunity has already been seized by organizations such as the BBC and RTE, whose new media groups have been allocated digital learning channels in Ireland and the UK Hence, this paper is an exploration of the possibilities that digital video presents to both learners and educators alike In order to explore the possibilities of digital video and to facilitate learners and researchers, a digital video tutorial has been developed with the underlying design principle that, where possible, the learning content is presented

visually Once a user is proficient in making digital video and embedding it intotheir web content, he or she can also archive the video into a multimedia database where other users can view the content online The purpose of this

is that examples of constructivist learning can be viewed, thereby giving real life visual models of different learning styles of participants

platform, thus delivering a new multimedia tool This is in contrast to traditionalvideo technology where the cost of equipment and development is high and a complex skill set is needed.

The digital format allows for the information to be manipulated and explored

in a much more user-friendly manner Peoples’ imaginations are not longer confined by the technology but instead liberated by it

Digital video will facilitate successful learning when the users are in control of the process of actively pursuing knowledge rather than simply passively consuming it The types of advantages that classrooms, connected with broadband networks, can offer include global interactivity and extensive collaboration opportunities (Currer, 1991)

One of the biggest opportunities that thus presents itself is the use of digital video by educators to create learning environments that are both richer and that add new dimensions to the learning processes Consider a technician, for example, who would normally depend on a schematic diagram in a manual

to learn how to disassemble a printer With access to a learning resource featuring digital video the learning is much more natural A technician may

have to read the manual several times, but if the procedure can be viewed thetechnician will learn much more intuitively and quickly

Video allows you to bring subject matter experts face-to-face with the

learners; this is used in Harvard distance education courses (Harvard

University, 2001) Here I see a trend happening in the university sector where leading researchers and lectures collaborate globally, where a student takes

an undergraduate degree but also takes modules offered by a different

university whose departments have specialist areas of interest

This paper will explore the development of a resource that teaches how to usedigital video with digital video Participants have been questioned as the effectiveness of the new learning environment and results will be presented

Background

Digital video is a new and emerging technology The Mpeg 4 standard opens

up the possibilities for streaming video on PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) devices and next-generation mobile phones Telecomms operators such as Orange are actively pursuing M-learning; Vodaphone research is currently taking place in the University of Birmingham, in the Handler Project (Sharpes, Corlett, Westmancott 2000) In this project, digital video is used to assist individuals and groups to learn anytime and anywhere Learners can capture everyday events such as images, notes and sounds and relate them to a web-based leaning resources where they can be organized into a visual

knowledge data base to be shared by other learners

A number of networks have previously been created to support education, such as the MCNC Concert (Communications Network of North Carolina for Education, Research and Technology) and the Vision Carolina Network (Stahl,1993) At the same time early work was being carried out in interactive digital video systems, multimedia distributed computing, and video applications and servers (Reisman, 1994)

Teachers have also been interested in the possibilities of video conferencing especially as the technology is becoming easier to use and more affordable (Kinnear, McWilliams, & Caul, 2001) Universities too have been exploring theneed for increasing use of multimedia and its link to their aspirations for the new century (Daniels, 1997) Thus, with so much new development and so many keen to take advantage of the new technology, digital video is coming ofage

Literature Review

Having perused online resources at length there were a number of companiesinterested in exploring digital video, a variety of research institutions who are carrying out research in the area but in reality there is relatively little research carried out in using digital video in education as the area is so new Obviously visual technologies (film, TV, traditional video) have been used in education for many years, with greater or lesser degrees of success What differentiates digital video from these media is that it can be easily integrated into highly interactive scenarios that can be delivered through multiple platforms

The sources investigated ranged from company promotions to academic papers but so far there has been little real research in this new field As to the application of digital video to education, however, with regard to deeper

research there is a growing trend in digital video in m-learning

(mobile-learning) specifically in the application of video cameras as a mobile recordingdevice and in streaming content to mobile phones or PDA’s devices

Best Practice

In searching the literature, I came upon five examples of best practice that influenced the design of my artefact They are presented to both inform the work not only in terms of the issues in the area of digital video and successful designs in the field but also to inform the reader of the state-of-the-art As there are few examples in the new emerging field they will be presented here

in some depth with other studies being compared and contrasted to them

There is an increasing need to build in interactivity into distance education and recent research has shown the benefit of software visualisation (Lattu, 2000) “Visualisation could make it possible for the layman as well to quickly understand programming and algorithms” (p 2) This learning environment could have been improved by using digital video.

There are several new areas of research and applications of digital video that are presently being explored including the implementation of a campus

distance learning networks using multicast, a construction of an in-service training website for school teachers, and construction of a real-time CAD system in a Web-based environment as well as an Internet video-on-demand system of classroom teaching (ICCE/ICCAI 2000)

Visualization Techniques

Lawrence T Escalada, Robert Grabhorn, and Dean A Zollman, from the Department of Physics, Kansas State University wrote on “Applications of Interactive Digital Video in a Physics Classroom” in 1996 This paper was particularly useful as it demonstrated one of the uses of interactive digital video in education The paper illustrates the use of digital video to enhance constructivist learning It confirmed how this particular media could provide students with visualization techniques that are ‘active’ for the process of learning science The understanding of concepts of physics could be

enhanced by visualization, and simulations created by video, that gives the learner a mental images of abstract scientific theories used in physics This is

a forward thinking paper and although the technology has moved on

considerably since it was written the vision for the use of video is useful

These visualization techniques not only allow students to observe how objectsbehave and interact, but also provide students with visual associations that they may capture, and preserve the essence of physical phenomena more effectively than do verbal descriptions (Cadmus, 1990)

As the course is a good example of using visuals to help aid understanding of complex ideas, it will now be explored in more detail The research team created 4 interactive digital video activities that were designed to support student participation The students captured video of experiments they were assigned and with the combination of a personal computer and a digital video camera, they were able to analyse and discuss their findings to illustrate the concepts I have decided to concentrate on one of these activities because it

is illustrates a real life scenario, much like my own artefact

The story line for the fourth activity involves a pilot who is dropping a “care package” to campers As an advisor to the pilot, the students must determine the best location for the release of the package from the airplane The

students create a model of this situation by using a ball, which released from

an electromagnet mounted on a vertical drop rod The drop rod and a video camera are each attached to moving dynamics carts (See Figure 1) By

analysing motion using the scene as captured by the moving camera, the students put themselves in a reference frame similar to that of the pilot In the activity, the students compare the motion of a ball that is dropped from a moving cart with the motion of the cart itself Students use Video Analyser (fig.2) to trace the path of the falling ball in various arrangements of the

camera and ball

Fig 1

Fig 2

Path of a Falling Ball (with Each Point Represented by “+”) Traced by Video Analyser

By using the Visual Space-Time tool, the students create visual still shots of the ball’s motion in different times in its descent, which are then used as reference frames The students are able to thus quickly see, for example, that the space-time diagram for a stationary observer (camera) and stationary ball

is identical to that obtained when the carts carrying the ball-drop apparatus and the camera are moving at identical velocities For most students this result is a surprise In this activity the author shows us how a real life problem,one that the student can relate to, enhances and deepens their understanding

of classical physics theories

Scientific theories have been expressed in a mathematical language to

describe abstract concepts, which due to the different learning styles of

individuals, not all people can comprehend, and as a result feel that this may not be for them For example if we take the case of a computer algorithm that describes a sorting method to find data in memory, the algorithm describes mathematically the best approach to this, the student can learn this by rote and reproduce it on an exam paper and may get full marks but does the student really understand the solution and can he or she apply the solution to other problems?

But if you were to take the same algorithm and show real life examples of the application, or if the algorithm is represented visually then the learner

engages with the medium and experiment with the validity of the actual

algorithm structure (by this I mean variables can be changed within the

algorithm) and although the outcome maybe wrong and the program may not run, the student would understand why it didn’t work and hence in my opinion gain a deeper understanding of the overall algorithm What is actually

happening is that he or she is learning by making errors in a safe

environment

Now the learning can become exciting because students become aware of their own abilities that may have being dormant Escalada et al (1996)

describe how with the use of technologies such as computers and video it is possible to make clinical experiments in physics more focused on ‘real life’ so that students can use the theories in physics and then apply them to realistic situations This gives the students a deeper understanding of the concepts that have been dealt with which is a good use of video in education

Another physics course which used video was an activity-based introductory college physics course which had no formal lectures, and integrated computertechnology into real experiences in which students developed and reinforced their skills When analysing the effect of Workshop Physics on student

learning by comparing students’ performance before and after the course, Laws reported dramatic improvements in student conceptual learning in the topics of kinematics, dynamics, latent heat, and electricity (Laws, 1995) These improvements in student learning resulted only after discussion,

observation, and prediction were integrated into the program Laws also reported student attitudes were more positive about the mastery of computer applications than any other aspect of the Workshop Physics course (Laws, 1991)

This example of problem-based learning is much like the learning objective within the artefact associated with this dissertation – the digitisation of light relevant to the lens aperture of a video camera and the resulting computing performance of a computer, and its effect in real-time display of an image, in this case, a Tiger Although this learning objective can be represented in a traditional learning environment i.e a laboratory, the setting up of equipment can be time consuming and the educator must make and maintain a financial and personal investment

The time spent on the construction of an experiment is necessary but can be considered an investment in that the results obtained (because we are using digital video) can be stored on a computer, or archived on a server for further analysis, or it can be used again In addition, with the on-going advances in technology, these experiments can be streamed allowing collaborative

learning on a global scale

The application of video in allowing for more cost effective delivery of courses has great potential Consider these types of experiments being carried out in third world countries where it is difficult to implement costly laboratory

facilities An example of this type of application of digital video in third level education is being carried out in the Dublin Institute of Technology that is involved in the African Virtual University The aim of the African Virtual

University is to deliver degree standard and specialized courses via satellite uplink into various participating sites in Africa This is a partnership project involving the World Bank, the DIT, and two third-level institutions in the United States and the sites in Africa The DIT has been involved in the delivery of three courses: Physics, Introduction to Statistics, and Introduction to the Internet Digital cameras that can analyse how the students behave while doing these experiments might be a further step in these studies, and again the results can be archived in multimedia object-oriented databases and thesecan be used for further research

NICE (Narrative-based, Immersive, Constructionist / Collaborative

Environments) project was a test bed for the exploration of virtual reality as a learning medium with a focus on informal education The NICE project is a virtual learning environment for children implemented in the CAVE and relatedmulti-user virtual reality (VR) technologies The NICE project provides an engaging setting where children construct and develop simple virtual

ecosystems, collaborate via networks with other remotely located children, and create stories from their interactions in the real and virtual world

NICE uses the constructivist approach to learning, collaboration, and narrativedevelopment, and is designed to use the strengths of virtual reality: a

combination of immersion, telepresence, immediate visual feedback, and interactivity This type of program is creating a learning space for the learnersthat they can modify themselves It supports active learning and gets the learners to use their own imagination I believe that these types of projects differentiate education from training in that the individual is discovering their own abilities and using their own imagination where they are not afraid to express their own ideas

The Electronic Visualization Laboratory

The Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) is a graduate research laboratory specializing in virtual reality and real-time interactive computer graphics and interactive video This is a joint effort of UIC’s College of Engineering and School of Art and Design, EVL represents the oldest formal collaboration between engineering and art,

offering graduate degrees in electronic visualization (MFA, MS, PhD)

Electronic visualization is the art and science of creating images in electronic media and on virtual reality display devices The primary goal of the ElectronicVisualization Laboratory is to further students’ visual goals using the tools of advanced computer graphics, computer animation, interactive graphics, video,and virtual reality (VR) The labs related research goals include scientific visualization, new methodologies for informal science and engineering

education, paradigms for information display, distributed computing,

sonification, human/computer interfaces, every-citizen interfaces, and abstractmath visualization EVL is also involved in evaluating VR as an educational tool

This collaboration between the technology-related faculties and the

humanities is a recent but positive occurrence in universities in the USA and one such example is Carnegie Mellon University The university has a centre for entertainment technology and here content is produced using virtual realityand digital video They have a project called Interact, which is used as a

training course by the universities human resources dept, for learning

modules on interpersonal communications

Visualization and virtual reality offer huge potential in interactivity with both people and technology over the Internet This has been embraced by

commercial interests as well, e.g Sony Play Station allows game players to play networked games over the Internet TV companies should be using the collaborative interactivity of the World Wide Web to create program content that is interactive, i.e the viewer is no longer passive but can take part in their

favourite soap operas, or they can controlwhich angles a football match is viewed from

Tele-Immersion or collaborative virtual reality shared over networks enables learners to interact with each other as well as their three-dimensional models over distance, in real-time The tools, techniques, applications, hardware and software infrastructure which drive Tele-immersion are, are currently a primaryfocus of EVL’s work

Digital video will, in conjunction with virtual reality environments that are already being used in the technology learning centres in other universities in the USA, such as Stanford and Berkeley, open these centres of learning via broadband networks to a global audience and thereby cross the digital divide The learning centres in these universities are using technology to create and support teaching This research will be used to create real life learning

scenarios If, for example, you have a laboratory with each student equipped with a digital camera, the collected data (digital video) from the students cameras can be recorded, the resultant digital video data can then be

processed by computer software, or archived for later use by virtual reality developers to modify or create new virtual reality learning circumstances Thatwill enable the creation of 3-d learning environment by students themselves

In this situation, the VR developer develops with more data from the users on how they interact with each other (social constructivism) and monitor their progress while conducting an experiment or learning module.

The research data that will be available from this organization will enable others to carry out further research in the field of digital video and accelerate the deployment of interactive video in education

From the above research studies in the various university’s there appears to

be a trend in enriching the learning experiences for learners, this will have applications in medical education and in science education, because with vr the learning experience has become deeper

This type of Technology has the potential to make learning active, and the users can create their own learning worlds and indeed discover new latent talents within themselves As a result, there will be an acceleration of

development in new innovations

Professor Chang

Professor Chang (chang, smith 1997) from the department of Electrical

Engineering at Columbia University, New York has been carrying out research

in Content-Based Video Search as well as research on multimedia signal processing, video indexing, wireless/mobile video, and multimedia

authentication watermarking He is currently leading Columbia's ADVENT industrial consortium and the Digital Video/Multimedia Group

Professor Chan’s research focus on video is primarily based on the

architecture of hardware platforms for the delivery and storage of video

content He is concerned with how we search and manipulate rich multimedia content available through high digital bandwidth Also he examines how

search and retrieval of images and digital video based on image content can offer greater potential for analysis of data in this case video over traditional textual keywords

Professor Chang (1997) has developed software systems for this purpose andthey are “Webseek” and “Web clip” Webseek is a content-based search engine for web image/video content, Webclip is a system for browsing and editing high-bandwidth compressed video on the web Webclip empowers the non-professional user to edit mpeg-2 videos with simple drag-and-drop

interactions in the web browser

Some of Professor Chang’s research is carried out in collaboration with the Institute for Learning Technologies at University of Columbia’s Teacher’s College, where they are applying research results in multimedia search and retrieval to curriculum design for k-12 education

Professor Chang as developed a large search engine “VIDEOQ” that has unique search tools that can search a large collection (10 hours of video,

2000 video clips, 20000 video objects) VIDEOQ i.e the first fully automatic video search engine that supports object-based spatial-temporal matching (query by objects that the video contains and motions they make In my

opinion, video retrieval, and search of video data from databases, which can

be networked in a global context can be used by research in education so seehow learners from different cultures interact with each other and with the learning content

One application where I see this potential, is where Vygotsky’s theory of ego- centric speech, cannot only be recorded but also the learners’ visual

expressions can be captured In this type of new database, for example, userscan input video scenes or create their own video clips and input these images rather then textual keywords to search for similar content For example, a learner can be using an e-learning object on Java programming, and while online through the Internet the learner’s egocentric speech and visual

expressions can be recorded This can also be carried out with multiple

learners, comparisons can be made using the video analysis of how learners from different cultures, ages, gender, and geographical locations reacted to the learning object on Java programming Once this is logged on a database

the video data can be analysed and provide feed back data to the designer of the learning object to improve the effectiveness of learning paths within that module and if it needs to be redesigned the module to suit different learning style for cultural diversities.

Digital technology, thus, supports deeper learning and that learning institutes

in the 21st century will have to embrace technology into their organizations,

as a large percentage of their students will have their own mobile phones and laptops

Teaching staff maintain that these are disruptive devices and are seen as a problem and so there is a move to ban them from the lecture theatre and the classroom, and I would agree with this view to some extent, but I would argue that we need to change our perceptions of seeing this as a problem, and instead focus on it as an opportunity to use these devices The learners, couldfor example, engage with the learning content and the lecture or teacher not

as a ‘sage on the stage’ but instead as a facilitator and coordinator of learning content through various media

Internet2

The Internet2 initiative, for example, is a major development program in the USA (funded by a consortium of universities, network developers and internet service providers) The University Corporation runs this development for Advance Internet Development (UCAID) (Wiseman, 1999) The goals of the organization are for network and application developments that will enhance the capabilities for collaboration between researchers in different universities through out the USA The focus of the initiative is the access to a high

bandwidth backbone known as the ‘Abilene’ network, this network connects many regional nodes (within USA) that are termed ‘gigPoPs’ this network is being used as a test bed for MULTICASTING and middleware development.Partners in the ABILENE network are Qwest, Nortel and Cisco The present bandwidth for this backbone is 2.4gbyte/s, but planned to be increased to 9gbytes/s, this will facility research in digital video, web casting and streaming

video for education, because there is now available a high speed (by current standards) network that can facilitate the demands that rich multimedia

content places on networks

The Internet2 Digital video network (I2-DVN) will provide a national higher education video network service to facilitate the delivery of stored streaming and interactive high quality digital video The I2-DVN will carry out research in licensing and distribution video content and the storage of video material suitable for use in courses, lectures and videoconferences, it also intends to develop archive and search capabilities for video libraries The I2-DVN is a collaborative venture among several high performance network video

initiatives including:

1 Icair- international centre for advance Internet research

2 The research TV consortium

3 ViDe : the south-eastern Universities research association’s video development initiative

These will free up current thinking in research in education because the focus will not be on the technology and the training of personnel and users of it, but

on how we will use to technology to support and develop theories and

learning methodologies in education

terrains Dunlop and McDonald (2000) have specific research strategies for querying and data mining in a digital video context

This is the potential that I also see digital video offering valuable research in the field of education and in e-learning The one obstacle to this at the

moment is that the network bandwidth at present is far too narrow and slow for us to realize the potentials that e-learning as to offer Because we need speeds greater then 2gbytes/second and also object-orientated database are not yet practicable to store digital video content we are only at the beginning

of this new technology But in the future, with the present exponential growth

in both hardware and software, technologies (and by this I mean the

developments of multimedia chips such as Intel core/networking processors) will advance to allow for easily available streaming video and software that create tools for interactivity and delivery of video

There are a number of recent innovations that will positively affect the ability

of educators and designers to create and roll out on a wider scale the types ofsmaller-scale projects we have been examining

This information will create new pedagogic models that will focus on

alternative cognitive abilities, which should encourage innovative learning The combination of virtual reality and digital video should cause learning to occur within the individual without the learner be aware of it happening This type of new learning poses challenges to traditional educators, because they will have to leave behind the traditional models, because they will be

incomprehensible to a young generation that is already more proficient in using technology then their mentors But these learning possibilities can only occur if the networks and bandwidth that are in place can cope with the

volume of data the interactive digital video demands, and the next section will highlight these issues These studies are based on the technical issues and techniques used for digital video; however, there is need for further studies in the application of digital video in education What is important here is linking the technology of digital video with the application to education and hence making the production and development of digital video accessible to those

that may wish to use this medium in a creative and as a new mode of

communication thereby embedding cognition within the learner

Methodology & Design of Artefact

I wanted to take a different approach to e-learning content, and so with this artefact I wanted it to be fun to use and yet learning to take place hence (e-learning not e-reading)

I used as much visualization as possible i.e still photo shots and video itself,

To describe the techniques used I tried to give a deeper understanding of the terms as one software package will be different than the other

My objective was to enable the students taking the MSc IT in education

course in Trinity College Dublin to make digital videos, edit them and publish them on their web site, it was also an opportunity for myself to learn new skills

to achieve this objective, namely MySQL, PHP, Flash, and web authoring I created a feedback form so that I could see if I was getting the information across - was I facilitating learning or hindering it?

Introduction to Artefact

The concept that I wanted to make the learner aware of was what is meant bythe term digital, how it differs from traditional video, and the advantages it has over traditional broadcast video To this end I practiced what I preached by developing a Flash animation showing analogue to digital conversion of light through a camera lens showing the relationship between the armature of the lens and the amount of information taken in by the camera, which is then digitised and feed to a computer See fig 1

Fig1

SAMPLE PAGE FROM TUTORIAL

Virage VS Learning, (Virage, 2002) a company that creates and manages

video and rich media organizational training and presentations, has published

a white paper on the development of their product They created an

architecture based on the input of digital video from multiple sources (see fig.3), which was captured into a video logger and was then stored on a video server whose output was presented in a rich media format for the user to viewvia a browser This architecture could be improved by interacting more with interactive media i.e Flash (Macromedia) where the user is no longer a

passive participant in the learning process

In my own research I will improve the present work by designing the

architecture to have a more interactive element and a feedback mechanism for the user