Laboratory Education at a Distance

Final Report

By

Ralph Mason
University of Regina
September, 1996

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1. Introduction

This report will outline work carried out over the past nine months in developing multimedia courseware for both lectures and labs. The ultimate goal is to develop courseware which allows science and engineering courses to be delivered remotely. The report is broken down into a number of sections which discuss each of the activities carried out during the project. The project initially started at ground zero with no facilities and only a rudimentary understanding of multimedia courseware development. Throughout the project a great deal of knowledge and expertise has been gained. Each of the sections of this report will try to highlight the key factor that should be considered for multimedia courseware development. Hopefully this report will serve as a guideline for others wishing to create multimedia courseware.

2. Digitize Current Courses

The first step in creating a multimedia version of a class is to digitize the current content of a class. For the classes that I have been teaching this involves two main steps. The first step is to convert the written text in notes and slides into electronics form. Although somewhat time consuming, this step is straightforward. The second step is to convert figures and diagrams into electronic form. This can generally be accomplished in one of two ways. The first way is to redraw the diagrams using a vector based graphic editor like Coreldraw, Harvard Graphics, etc. This can be very time consuming, particularly with complex drawings. The advantage is that the resulting graphic files are relatively small in size (typically tens of kilobytes). The second approach is to directly convert drawings to pixel based electronic form using an image scanner. Using a scanner, images can be quickly converted to electronic form. The disadvantage is that the resulting graphic files can be large in size (typically hundreds of kilobytes).

Using scanned images with a presentation package like Powerpoint requires a high end computer (100MHz Pentium with fast disks) which will allow movement from one image to the next reasonably quickly. When converting the ENEL283 course content into multimedia format, pixel based images were required for the multimedia software (Macromedia Director). For almost all the figures we have been using, the scanner based approach was used to create electronic versions. The digitized figures served as the starting point for many of the still images and animation sequences in the multimedia course.

Digitizing a course requires only a small fraction of the time required to generate a multimedia version of a class. My experience has shown that a summer student who is reasonably proficient with computers can digitize two courses over a four month period. Currently, six courses have been digitized and mounted on the Engineering Web Site in Powerpoint format.

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3. Create Engineering Multimedia Lab

A small multimedia lab was created in the education building. Equipment and software was purchased for the lab including: 1. High end multimedia PC workstation 2. VCR 3. Hi 8 camcorder 4. 14" color monitor 5. 640x480 pixel video digitizing board 6. Macromedia Director 7 Adobe Premiere The approximate value of the equipment purchased was $18,000 which was obtained from internal university funds. Equipment was also borrowed from the Film and Video department of the University. This included light kits, professional cameras and mikes, a blue screen and an audio digitizing system. In addition to the above equipment, two low end PCs were borrowed from Electronic Systems Engineering. These PCs were used for training and for generating some of the individual components of the multimedia courseware. Because of their lower performance, these PCs were not suitable for editing the full courseware files.

4. Hire and Train Students

Three summer students were hired and began working on the first of May/96. To provide as many of the necessary skills as possible, one student was hired from each of the Film and Video, Journalism and Communications, and Electronic Systems Engineering programs. This proved to be essential, as many of the necessary task could not have been accomplished without the student expertise. Although each student was expected to work on all aspects of the project, they were primarily responsible for tasks that related to their specialties. For example, the film and video students did most of the filming in the lecture hall and many of the animation sequences and graphic editing functions. During their first month, the students were primarily involved with training and setting up the new multimedia lab. Most of the training was focused on the software program Director which was purchased from the company Macromedia. This is probably the most widely used multimedia software today. It provides a great deal of flexibility, however, it is a complicated package to learn.

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During their first week, a local expert at ISM provided the students and myself with a short introduction to the Director software and pointers on some of the pitfalls to avoid. The remainder of our training was through instruction manuals provided with the program, as well as some additional books which were purchased at local book stores.

The students gained a great deal of knowledge about using Director and creating multimedia courseware. This expertise will be extremely valuable for their future careers. In fact, the Journalism student enjoyed the experience so much, she has decided to focus here program in the area of multimedia and has volunteered some of here time to help complete part of the project.

The Film and Video student has been an exceptional asset to the project and has agreed to work an additional four months until the end of December. Another engineering student has been hired for four months to replace the original engineering student who is now on a co-op workterm in Ottawa.

5. Creation of Short Promotional CD

In collaboration with ISM, a short interactive promotional CD is being developed based on the course content of engineering class ENEL489 (Integrated Circuit Design). An initial content package was provided to ISM in March at which time a Multimedia outline was created. Difficulties with digitizing hardware at ISM delayed completion of the project. Digitized video clips were subsequently generated in the new Engineering multimedia lab and made available to ISM in early July. Unfortunately, the key contact for the project is no longer at ISM. We will therefore have to rely primarily on our own resources. This part of the project has been delayed as the primary focus in on generating courseware for ENEL283 (Analog Electronics)

. 6. Creation of Multimedia Version of ENEL283

As indicated above, the majority of our work focused on creating multimedia courseware content for engineering class ENEL283. This is a relatively new area of education with very little background material or example courseware available. It is not surprising that our plans changed significantly as the project evolved. Our initial goal was to use live video clips from classroom lectures as one of the primary sources of content. It became evident quite early that this would be unacceptable in terms of both image quality and digital storage requirements. It was also clear that a much better product could be achieved by using animation and editing the audio and video off-line.

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Editing was required to remove duplication of material, remove unnecessary breaks and punctuation, and ensure complete coverage to the topic material. In essence, a complete story board with every word matched to the appropriate video (animation, talking head, simulation program output, etc.) had to be generated. This turned out to be a much larger task than originally anticipated. Particularly expensive is the time required to generate animation sequences. Although very time consuming, the animation sequences do provide a new form of content delivery which is very powerful and in many ways can not be matched in the conventional classroom setting.

By the end of July/96 we revised our project goal. Instead of generating the complete course content, our new goal is to generate all the introductory material, course outline, a single lecture module and a single lab module by the end of December/96. This will include approximately two hours of multimedia content. We estimate the complete course will require approximately forty hours of multimedia content. This will give you an indication of the vast amount of work required to generate a multimedia version of a course. To date we have 60% of the introductory material, 70% of the lecture module and 15% of the lab module completed.

Generating the multimedia content can generally be broken down into the following steps:

1. capture lecture/lab material on tape
2. transcribe lecture/lab audio into electronic text
3. edit electronic text
4. generate story board
5. generate animation/capture video
6. narrate edited text
7. integrate audio/video/text into multimedia courseware

I will now discuss each of these step in further detail.

6.1. Capture Lecture/Lab Material on Tape

Each of the lectures and labs were recorded on tape using a professional quality camcorder. In addition to capturing the lecturer/lab instructor at the front of the class, tapes were also made of the classroom video projector system which included slide presentations and simulation program outputs.

A high quality lighting system was used to ensure the best video quality, however, it was still found that the resulting video quality made it difficult to see writing on the white board. The audio portion of the recordings was used as a starting point for generating concise multimedia content.

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6.2. Transcribe Lecture/Lab Audio Into Electronic Text

The recorded lectures and labs are replayed in slow motion and electronic text is transcribed from the audio track. This is a tedious process which requires approximately 6 - 8 person hours to transcribe one hour of audio. Currently we have transcribed eight hours of audio which gives us more than enough raw text for the remainder of this project. This work was carried out by the engineering student who had an understanding of the course content and could better recognize engineering terms, acronyms and symbols.

6.3. Edit Electronic Text

The raw text is then edited to remove repeated content, unnecessary punctuation, etc. Any content which is missed during the lecture is also added. The overall text is then cleaned up to improve the grammar and the flow of the material and to make it as concise as possible. Our experience shows that the resulting text is much better than what would normally be delivered in a lecture. At the same time that the text is being edited, an initial idea of the accompanying video is written down to help us later match the audio to the appropriate video. Most of this work was carried out by myself. The Journalism student made the final edits to improve the grammar and the flow of material and to simplify the text where possible. I estimate that it requires 25 - 30 person hours to edit one hour of audio text.

6.4. Generate Story Board

The edited text and preliminary video concepts are used to generate a story board. The story board contains a sequence of crude hand drawn graphics with accompanying text. A template was made which allows a number of graphics to be drawn on the same sheet of paper. Individual sentences of the edited text are written under each picture. This work was carried out by the Journalism student and myself. I explained what should go into each graphic and she drew the graphics and wrote down the accompanying text. I estimate that it requires 15 - 20 person hours to generate one hour of story board material.

6.5. Generate Animation/Capture Video

Once the story board is completed the video content is generated. This is generally either an animation sequence or video captured from a computer screen, lab demo, or classroom lecture. The captured video is edited to remove unwanted portions and to fit it into the correct screen size. A large amount of time was spent in generating animation sequences. The result has been very rewarding as we are able to show analog circuit operation in a way that cannot be matched in the classroom setting.

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For example, instead of trying to explain how the current will flow through a circuit on a white board, we can actually draw the circuit on the computer and show the current moving through the circuit. We can also show where it increases and decrease or combines with other currents.

Most of the animation and video capture operations were carried out by the Film and Video and Journalism students. The Engineering student did some of the animation and provided expertise on technical details. The Engineering student was also responsible for setting up and demonstrating labs. I estimate that it requires 300 - 600 person hours to generate one hour of video content. This estimate is dependent upon the amount of animation required and the expertise of the multimedia content developers.

6.6. Narrate Edited Text

The edited text is narrated to generate the final audio track. If it is desirable to have a talking head on the screen, the video and audio can be recorded together. Recording audio and video together gives a much more professional look if a teleprompter is used. Unfortunately, we did not have access to a teleprompter and had to make due as best as we could. Once recorded, the narrated video was resized to fit the computer screen. We also added video transitions to avoid undesired breaks in the narration sequences.

The Journalism student performed the narration and the Film and Video student filmed all the shots. I estimate that it requires 10 - 15 person hours to generate one hour of narration.

6.7. Integrate Audio/Video/Text Into Multimedia Courseware

The final step is to integrate all the multimedia content into a single Director movie. This requires a detailed knowledge of Director and the Director programming language called Lingo. Integration basically involves aligning all the audio, video and text components in the movie script and adding Lingo programming scripts to control the action. A large amount of testing is required to verify the correct operation of the movie. This is particularly true when there is interaction with a variety of possible movie sequences.

This work was carried out primarily by the Film and Video student. I estimate that it requires 80 - 100 person hours to integrate one hour of multimedia courseware.

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7. Conclusions and Future Opportunities

Throughout the course of this project a great deal of knowledge has been gained about the creation of multimedia courseware. In addition to the detailed technical knowledge that has been gained, two important concepts have emerged. First, the power of animation and video capture and the ability to precisely define the courseware adds a new dimension to course content. This combined with interactive content and the ability to view and review material anywhere, will provide a very powerful new form of course delivery. The other important factor is the vast amount of work required to generate the multimedia content. I estimate that for courseware which contains a significant amount of animation it requires anywhere from 400 - 800 person hours of work to generate one hour of multimedia content. A typical University course with 40 contact hours would require from 8 - 16 person years to generate a multimedia version. Given the large investment in resources, it will be critical to decide where best to concentrate our efforts in courseware development. In addition to creating courseware content there are a number of future opportunities that might be pursued including:

1. Develop a program for training people in multimedia courseware development. This includes a broad range of shills in film and video, graphics design, communications and computers.

2. Develop a capability for delivering courseware over the internet. We have just begun investigating using the internet for courseware delivery instead of CDs. Currently, the video bandwidth requirements are too high for most sites, however, within 5 - 10 years this will probably become the main method of delivery. It has a number of advantages including the ability to easily change and update material.

3. Consider making multimedia technology the focus of a research park at the University of Regina. It would have a number of key ingredients including potential participation of a large number of content providers at the University, employ a large number of Saskatchewan people in creating the multimedia content and provide a product which could be exported around the world.

In addition to this report, I have included a CD with contains a draft copy of our current work. I encourage you to view this CD to get a better idea of what we have created. To run the CD properly you will require a high end multimedia PC. We suggest the following minimum configuration:

To run the CD, please follow the attached instructions. For improved performance, the files on the CD can be copied to your hard disk. The files will occupy approximately 190 Mbytes and should be placed in a single directory. The multimedia program will require approximately two minutes to load up at the beginning, so be patient!

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