Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
Features
Rich Media >> Get Rich Quick
7/22/2005
In the latter cases, Kapp says faculty members are most likely to use rich media to do nothing more than mimic the experience in the classroom. While these educators might go through the trouble of hooking up a streaming videofeed during lectures, the application won’t offer anything beyond this feed itself, a poor use of rich media, by any standard.
One way to increase educator comfort levels with rich media is to make it easy for instructors to take advantage of the technology as a way to supplement what g'es on in class. At Drexel University (PA), for instance, the school’s IT department launched what they call a “Rich Media Drop Box” to automate the process of digitizing content to be used with interactive technologies. The system hinges upon command line encoders from Sonic Foundry (www.sonicfoundry.com), which cost about $20,000 apiece.
To use the system, faculty members drag and drop text, audio, and video files into a special folder on the school network; the files are then transported to an encoding farm, where they are converted into digital content that can be used in just about any rich media environment. Access to this encoded content is through RSS syndication. According to John Morris, Drexel’s coordinator of Academic Technology and Web Services, the school processed more than 400 objects during a recent 10-week pilot program with 10 faculty members.
“Once the faculty members learned that this made it easy for them to digitize content, the Drop Box was something that really resonated with our faculty members,” he says. “One way to ensure rich media is rich is to make it accessible for everyone.”
Even with accessibility bases covered, rich media presents two other sizable challenges for colleges and universities looking to increase interactivity across the board. First is security—Villanova’s O’Donnell and a number of other rich media experts say that a surprising number of students fall victim to issues pertaining to firewall controls. The problems arise because at a time when identity theft and other security threats are at an all-time high, few students have their personal firewalls configured to allow incoming data to stream unchecked.
What’s more, when students log on to a rich media application, and their operating system asks them if they want to allow the stream through the firewall, many students decline because they are afraid of leaving their machines vulnerable to attacks from elsewhere on the Web.
Perhaps the biggest challenge with rich media is the way a school uses it to support human cognition. Mayer, the UCSB psychology professor who also authored the recently released Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning (Cambridge University Press, 2005), has studied the cognitive science since 1995, and insists that there’s a huge difference between a technology-centered approach and a learner-centered approach.
In theory, Mayer says that rich media can be a valuable tool. In practice, however, he insists that few, if any, schools actually use the technology the way they should. Looking forward, Mayer notes that in order for rich media to be more than just a fad, inventors must devise a way for users to rely upon rich media for something that extends and amplifies the ordinary classroom experience without detracting from it at all.
“We’re not even close to seeing rich media that, for lack of a better word, is rich,” he says. “The technology has the opportunity to revolutionize learning, but if it’s developed poorly, we will turn off more people than we attract.”
Matt Villano is senior contributing editor of this publication.
Cite this Site
copy text (above) for proper citation
Recommended Reading
- California Community Colleges Partner with Waterfall Mobile on Statewide Emergency Notification Coverage
The Foundation for California Community Colleges (FCCC) has awarded a statewide emergency alert notification contract to Waterfall Mobile. The contract establishes Waterfall's AlertU as an approved technology through the official non-profit foundation for the California Community College (CCC) system office. Through this partnership, individual colleges may directly implement emergency communication services, eliminating lengthy technology evaluation and RFP processes.
- King's College and ASU Add e2Campus for Improved Emergency Notifications
King's College and Arizona State University have switched to Omnilert's e2Campus for emergency notification. Omnilert also has introduced a new program called the ENS Conversion Service that allows schools to bulk upload data from their previous emergency notification system into e2Campus at no charge.
- Saint Joseph Builds Out Wireless Network in Multi-year Upgrade
Saint Joseph's University has begun deploying a Meru Networks wireless local area network across its Philadelphia campus as part of a multi-year effort to bring wireless coverage to every building on campus.
- Vista Ramp Up Is Happening Now, Study Says
Organizations may have been slow to adopt Microsoft Windows Vista, but expect that to change by late 2008 to 2009, according to a Forrester Research report by Benjamin Gray et al., published last week.
- Talisma Launches New Version of CRM with Built-in Application Management
Talisma Corp. announced version 8.0 of its constituent relationship management (CRM) application for higher education. The new release includes application management, a revamped user interface, two-way text messaging, personalized Web portals, and an ADA-compliant Web client, among other enhancements.
- Bringing Composers into Classrooms Through Skype
Two Pennsylvania teaching colleagues with an interest in music and technology are bringing remote experts into classrooms at almost no cost, using Skype's free videoconferencing technology.
