Educational Technology Distance Learning at UC Berkeley

1
Educational Technology Distance Learningat UC
Berkeley
(July 21, 2000)

• Lawrence A. Rowe
• Computer Science Division - EECS
• University of California at Berkeley
• Rowe_at_BMRC.Berkeley.EDU

2
Background

• Information technology is enabling significant
  changes in educational delivery
• Web as a publishing medium
• New modes of communication
• IT leading to major changes in other areas too
• Research, administration, etc.

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Outline

• Course Websites
• Publish information
• Communication Tools
• Email, newsgroups, and chat rooms
• Streaming Media
• Using video material, lecture webcasts, and
  collaboration

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Course Websites

• Many classes now use websites for admin
• Basic info (e.g., descriptions, meeting
  times/locations, schedules, etc.)
• Detailed info (e.g., syllabus, assignments,
  schedules, etc.)
• Some instructors also publish lecture notes
• Raw notes, transparencies, pdf/ppt, etc.
• Rich multimedia content
• Images, text, animations, sounds, video to teach
  the material

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Class Website
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Issues/Opportunities

• Training faculty and staff to use technologies
• Most instructors do not have the time to acquire
  the equipment and learn the new technologies
• Deploying infrastructure
• Requires a major investment in computer
  networking, PCs, and servers
• Funding content development
• Harder and more expensive than writing a book
• Who pays for on-going maintenance?

7
Communication Tools

• Almost all faculty and students use email
• Mostly positive way to communicate asynchronously
• Newsgroups can be very useful
• Excellent way to communicate with entire class
• Also encourages communication between students
  working on projects
• Chat rooms
• Good examples found in writing classes and
  foreign languages

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Issues/Opportunities

• Email can be misused
• Too easy to respond to one message with another
• Face-to-face communication is sometimes better
• Newsgroups must have a purpose in context of
  class
• Chat room use requires effort to train users
• Chat rooms are not yet a standard activity of
  most students
• Requires careful integration into educational
  activities by instructors

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Streaming Media

• Use video content in classes
• Convenient access to video databases
• Lecture webcasts
• Remote viewing/on-demand replay of lectures
• Remote participants
• Bring experts or access to remote equipment into
  the classroom
• Distributed collaboration
• N-way video conferencing

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ACM SIGCHI Video Demonstrations

• Short videos that demonstrate new UIs
• Collections published on annual video tape
• Hard to use tapes in class and difficult for
  students to use
• Built database of digitized clips
• Web-based interface for
• Browsing demos
• Playing videos and reading papers
• Constructing galleries of demos

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User Interface
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Generated Gallery
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Berkeley Internet Broadcasting System (BIBS)

• Webcast class lectures
• Live webcasts for remote viewing
• On-demand replay for review and watching missed
  lectures
• Fall 1998 and spring 1999 small experiments
• Approximately 5 classes with one hundred students
• Scaled up in fall 1999
• Webcasting 10 classes with approximate enrollment
  of 3,000
• Using Real Networks technology simulcast 50Kbs
  to 250 Kbs

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BIBS Website
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Chemistry 1A lecture archive
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Sample class lectures
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Berkeley MIG Seminar
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Example seminar
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Lecture Capture and Streaming Media

• Improved education for local students
• Access for remote students
• Potential source for additional funds, if
• Production cost varies depending on technology
  and content quality
• Need
• Search indexes, go fast button, summaries, etc.
• Links to related material including student notes

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Lecture Browser
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Best Technology?

• Real Networks?
• Pro stable, surestream, reasonable codecs
• Cons only 1 live stream, bit rate unresponsive vendor
• Lecture browser (Real video slides) limits
  instructor flexibility and requires manual
  authoring
• Mbone?
• Pro open, n-way audio/video, flexibility for
  live webcasts
• Con unstable, doesnt run on Macintoshes,
  outdated codecs, non-standard archive server

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Discussion

• What about other collaboration tools?
• Shared whiteboard Mash media board or Webex?
• Chat rooms/virtual environments
• Student/audience response systems
• Need open and portable toolkit!
• Suppose vic could produce Real Networks streams

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Internet Webcasting
Produce interesting experiences given unlimited
bandwidth

• Multiple video streams
• Varying picture size and quality
• Interactivity between subsets of viewers
• Use intelligent computer systems to improve
  quality

Examples Lecture/seminar webcasts composed of
speaker and content streams Live events where all
video sources are available Collaborative
experiences (places all over the world, the
FreeBSD Lounge, and Radio Free Vat)
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Webcasting Architecture
colab
studio

• N-way communication
• Multiple streams and discussion threads
• User control of content (e.g., select streams)
• Variable bit rates streams

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Webcast Production

• Standard MBone tools
• Vat (pcm), vic (H.261), sdr, etc.
• Broadcast Manager for launching webcasts
• Video Effects System to improve visual quality
• Directors Console for live production control
• Question Board for floor control and remote
  questions
• Integrating Real Networks distribution

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Internet Webcast Architecture
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Directors Console

• Lists available sources
• Shows current stream(s)
• Controls to manipulate stream (e.g., move camera
  or position stored media)
• Extensible interface to support new sources and
  controls
• Eventual goal is to automate this process

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Issues/Opportunities

• Must experiment with physical infrastructure
• Goal is to automate as much as possible
• Need continuous improvement and experimentation
• May be expensive
• Confusion over best technology
• ITU H.323 video conferencing standard?
• IETF standards incomplete?
• Vendor products (e.g., Apple QT, Cisco IP/TV,
  Microsoft WM, Real Networks/G2, etc.)
• Must be simple to setup and operate

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Issues/Opportunities (cont.)

• Demand for n-way collaboration is increasing
• Small group conferences research groups,
  teaching, etc.
• Large lecture/discussion seminars, classes,
  etc.
• Shared interaction with expensive equipment
  (e.g., telescopes)
• Opportunity for rapid change if good solution
  emerges

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Future Plans
Goal is to improve quality and produce more
broadcasts

• Quality improvements
• Upgrade CODECS to improve images and sound
• Improve interactivity between local and remote
  participants
• Introduce visual effects (e.g., titling,
  compositing, etc.)
• Production improvements
• Develop better control automation
• Produce more broadcasts
• Reduce production costs

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Research Problems

• Automation and control of webcasts
• Develop heuristics to automatically control
  broadcasts
• Bandwidth adaptation based on heuristics and use
• Compilation and planning of video effects
• Given high-level effect description and machine
  resource description, produce plan to execute
  effect within required performance constraints
• Dynamic optimization of effects processing across
  many users
• User-interface for presenter
• Sense of presence for remote participants
• Improved interface for ad hoc presentations
  (e.g., tablet, display control, etc.)
• Lecture capture and browsing
• Capture more than just slides and video (e.g.,
  notes, links to related material, search indexes,
  etc.)

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Assessing the Future

• Universities will exist for the forseeable future
• New technologies are well-suited to on-demand
  training and continuous learning, but not
  formative and graduate education
• University education encompasses more than what
  is taught in the classroom
• Communication bandwidth will be relatively free
  in 5-10 years
• In the midst of transition from few broadcast TV
  channels to thousands of Internet webcasts
• Researchers should focus on effective use of
  bandwidth (e.g., many video streams and
  simultaneous ineractive experiences)

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Concluding Remarks

• Virtual University will exist when
• Interaction with a colleague in Sweden or Norway
  is the same as the interaction with a colleague
  next door
• Using a library in Asia is the same as using the
  Bancroft Library at Berkeley
• Experiments are expensive and very risky
• But, we must continue to experiment so that we
  can exploit this technology opportunity
• Competitive advantage will go to the leader

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Summary

• Internet webcasting will enable important
  applications in the future
• Many problems and opportunities remain to be
  explored
• Distributed collaboration over the Internet will
  happen eventually
• First promised in early 1960s,

The website http//bmrc.berkeley.edu/ has more
information about our research
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References

• Broadcast Manager
• An Internet MBone Broadcast Management System by
  D. Wu, A. Swan, and L.A. Rowe, SPIE Multimedia
  Computing and Networking, January
  1999.http//bmrc.berkeley.edu/research/publicatio
  ns/1999/151/
• Directors Console
• dc A Live Webcast Control System by T.P. Yu, D.
  Wu, K. Meyer-Patel, and L.A. Rowe, submitted for
  publication, January 2000. http//bmrc.berkeley.e
  du/research/publications/2000/157/
• QuestionBoard
• Floor Control for Large-Scale MBone Seminarsby
  R. Malpani and L.A. Rowe.Proc. of The Fifth
  Annual ACM Intl. Multimedia Conf., November
  1997.http//bmrc.berkeley.edu/research/publicatio
  ns/1997/137/
• Parallel Video Special Effects
• Exploiting Temporal Parallelism For Software-only
  Video Effects Processing by Ketan Mayer-Patel
  and L.A. Rowe. Proc. of The Sixth Annual ACM
  Intl. Multimedia Conf., September
  1998http//www.bmrc.berkeley.edu/research/publica
  tions/1998/149/149.html.

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References (cont.)

• Parallel Video Special Effects (cont.)
• Exploiting Temporal Parallelism For Software-only
  Video Effects Processing by Ketan Mayer-Patel
  and L.A. Rowe. Proc. of The Sixth Annual ACM
  Intl. Multimedia Conf., September
  1998http//bmrc.berkeley.edu/research/publication
  s/1998/149/149.html.
• Exploiting Spatial Parallelism For Software-only
  Video Effects Processing by K. Mayer-Patel and
  L.A. Rowe,SPIE Multimedia Computing and
  Networking, January 1999. http//bmrc.berkeley.e
  du/research/publications/1999/150/
• Multicast Control Scheme For Parallel
  Software-only Video Effects Processingby K.
  Mayer-Patel and L.A. Rowe.Proc. of The Seventh
  Annual ACM Intl. Multimedia Conf., October
  1999.http//bmrc.berkeley.edu/research/publicatio
  ns/1999/154/
• A Parallel Software-Only Video Effects Processing
  Systemby K. Mayer-Patel.PhD Dissertation,
  Computer Science, U.C. Berkeley, December
  1999.http//www.bmrc.berkeley.edu/research/public
  ations/1999/155/index.html
• Layered Source/Channel Transmission
• Layered Transmission and Caching for the
  Multicast Session Directory Service by Andrew
  Swan, Steven McCanne, and L.A. Rowe.Proc. of The
  Sixth Annual ACM Intl. Multimedia Conf.,
  September 1998.Best student paper
  award.http//bmrc.berkeley.edu/research/publicati
  ons/1998/148/148.html