Rich media comes of age: how IHEs utilize the web's ability to deliver audio, video, and content to students anytime, and anyplace

University Business, Jan, 2005 by Elizabeth Crane

When the world wide web made its entrance into global consciousness, there were great hopes that it would be used as a tool for educational content and distribution. With the increasing availability of broadband access and the integration of technologies from telecommunications and broadcasting, the web's ability to bring audio, video, and content to students far from the classroom is finally being realized.

Reaching the People

"We've always taught our grad program long distance," explains Rose Ann DiMaria, Ph.D., R.N., and assistant professor at the West Virginia University School of Nursing. "We have 20 years in distance education."

As the premier research institution in the state, WVU has long understood its responsibility to meet the needs of its mostly rural population of potential graduate students. With Mountain Doctor Television (MDW), WVU provided satellite broadcast of its programs to students collected at centers across the state. However, by the mid- to late '90s, the grant for MDTV was running out and the university needed a new, more flexible approach, preferably one that didn't take students on the road for hours. "We couldn't afford to run it anymore," DiMaria admits. "It would have cost $15K per semester per course to continue the program. We teach an average of nine classes a semester, and that was just too much money."

DiMaria looked into web-based solutions and decided to try MediaSite Live, a real-time rich-media web presentation system that automates the capture, management, and delivery of multimedia content. It appealed to her initially because it is essentially plug and play. "You can teach the class in the same way as always because it doesn't require any special technique or adaptation for the teacher," she says. "We can still use our PowerPoint slides, and we don't need a technician to be there white the lecture takes place."

The fact that students no longer had to collect at central points was another advantage.

"Travel here can be prohibitively expensive and costly in terms of time spent," DiMaria says. "Our students are mostly women with a career and a family. They don't have time to spend hours getting back and forth to a central location to take classes."

Plus, says DiMaria, the department has control over the technology. There is no need for a technician to oversee the process. There's "no dial-up, and not a tot of equipment," she says. True, it is one-way video. The students cannot see each other and the instructor cannot see the students, but they can communicate student-to-student through WebCT and with the instructor by clicking a button, the equivalent of raising their hands.

The School of Nursing received its grant to implement MediaSite in the summer of 2002; the pilot class began in January 2003, and in the fall of 2003 the first master's in Nursing (MSN) class of 25 students began. There were concerns, at first, about whether the students would respond favorably to the new method of receiving their classes. Some students said they missed the camaraderie of sitting down with other people in a classroom environment, but that eliminating the need to travel to a central location more than outweighed the need to see their classmates. And since no specific computer equipment is required to participate in the program at all--even without the distance learning component--no one had hardware issues. Broadband access is recommended, since video is not made available to students with only a dial-up connection. DiMaria reports that students are happy with the new system and that enrollment is up: The starting class of 2004 had 32 students, an increase of more than 25 percent.

Costs are down, too. The initial outlay for the first year was about 20 percent of what it would have cost to continue MDTV. "Now we pay maintenance and fees yearly," says DiMaria, "and it's much less. Plus, we own it. We're not just paying for air time." There are no scheduling hassles like there are with broadcast slots, and even though students are expected to "attend" class live and participate, they can also watch the lecture again when it's time to study for the certification exams. WVU also offers continuing education credits for nurses across the state, all using MediaSite. "It pays for itself," says DiMaria. "We weren't going to be able to teach our program if we didn't have this."

Bringing It On

The technology and the infrastructure that make this kind of webcasting possible have made great strides toward seamless video capabilities. "There are three major factors in the cost of this: technology, infrastructure, and on-campus operating costs," says James Dias, vice president of Marketing and Sales at Sonic Foundry, Inc., the makers of MediaSite Live. "Digital technology is getting faster, better, and cheaper, and [video] compression these days is nothing short of remarkable. Bandwidth--a major issue in the '90s--is solved by broadband."

Where many video presentation products tripped up was at the ease-of-use step.