Course Casting Higher Education Content

by: Jennifer Lee Adams

 

 

 

 

ABSTRACT

This paper will discuss the course casting of higher education content for consumption of  institutions, instructors, students and consumers at large.  Course casting is the recording and transmission of a courses lecture content, to either a restricted or open audience.  First we will learn some technical semantics and logistics of the practice itself.  After having some common vocabulary in place the paper will discuss the philosophy behind open courseware, reactions to the technology in practice, legal concerns, some assessment information, and broader implications of using course casting in developing nations.

The Impacts of Course Casting Higher Education Content

Podcasting, Course Casting, and Open Courseware

 

Introduction

Originally a systems engineer for Stony Brook University, one of my jobs has been to  setup Macintosh SINC Site labs (public computer labs) at various facilities, including a multimedia lab, whose images contained software for teaching video, audio, and 3D animation.  To accomplish this task, I was continually gaining more and more exposure to technologies that OSX included in its server operating system, which would further benefit teaching and learning beyond the scope of my current position.  For example, a server that was needed to deploy a lab of computers, also came, by default, equipped with software for quicktime streaming, website hosting, podcasting, and blogging. 

 

Feeling strongly that this technology should be made available to all faculty at the  university, I set up my first Podcast Server in 2006 and started advertising it to the campus community.  Immediately, issues were raised about copyright and moderation.  There were some interesting discussions with the legal council, but eventually the project moved forward, while any serious talks regarding iTunes U, a hosted service that Apple made available for educational podcasts, languished on the wording of the contracts. By the time Apple made a contract that was accepted by New York State, the podcast server on campus was well used and was suiting the needs of the campus on its own. 

 

When Instructional Technologies was reshaped into Teaching, Learning + Technology (TLT) later in 2006, I made a successful pitch to have a job change and become SBU’s first Educational Technologist.  New services that I inherited or brought to the university included an expansion of podcasting, quicktime streaming for special events, student response systems (clickers), web conferencing, blogs, second life, flash streaming and rich media recording.  Additionally, I made a move to publicize content that instructors agreed to make public on social networking sites such as YouTube, Google Videos, and in the iTunes Music Store podcasting directory.

Stony Brook University currently uses Echo360 for rich media recordings, and these recordings are optionally also processed to become podcasts - audio, enhanced podcasts and vodcasts.  So in essence, we now have two different services that manage the university’s podcasting and may soon have another service directly tied into Blackboard.

 

Today, my primary role is in facilitating the use of technology in the classrooms where it makes sense, and I like to encourage the bringing of more active learning into the teaching process.  Also, I would like to see more open courseware being deployed from the university, so that the global knowledge base would be enriched,  but I have been met with some resistance with the faculty, and frankly, until Stony Brook University clearly states its intellectual property policy,  it is understandable.  At this time, only one course puts all of its lectures out on the internet for the world to see, the rest of the recordings are restricted to users with university usernames and passwords.  Most of the other publicly available content is special event, conferences, communications, public relations, and public meeting related.  Because these are not always related to classroom learning, sometimes there are charges involved in posting this content.

 

While the future is never clear, I see more and more content being freely available around the world, and the role of instructors to be moving away from expert knowledge holder, and more towards being a person who can guide the students towards comprehension, acquisition, discovery and contextualizing the content.  Instructors will need to help students tell the difference between true and false, reality and spin, theory and fact. I also have hope that students will find themselves removed from the 1000 student lecture halls that we find too often today, and more in situations where they get to engage the studies with actual personal interaction along with the time to experiment with ideas and lessons.  Hopefully, the technology that I empower educators to use will help to bring about these possibly idealistic situations.
The Impacts of Course Casting Higher Education Content

Podcasting, Course Casting, and Open Courseware

 

Podcasting

Podcast was the word of the year for the New Oxford American Dictionary in 2005.  Podcast, defined as "a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player" was added to the online update of the New Oxford American Dictionary, in early 2006 (Oxford University Press, 2009).  It is commonly added to this definition that podcasting is the ability to subscribe to the content, which is then periodically and automatically downloaded. Additionally, the content used to typically be audio, but now can be video as well, sometimes called Vodcasts.  Podcasts can be about absolutely anything and be of any quality.  Part of their initial charm was the homegrown and amateur feel to them.  As they caught on however, more and more commercial and large non-profit groups started to use podcasting to deliver their own, typically more polished, content.

 

For  instance, say one enjoyed National Public Radio’s (NPR) program Car Talk, then, to find the podcast of the program, search the terms “car talk” and “podcast” online at http://www.google.com, and find the website that looks like a match, for example,  http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=9911203.   After locating a suitable website, find the link or button that reads “subscribe to podcast”.  In this case, NPR has a nice full featured interface that gives you several options, as seen in Appendix A.

 

One might then click on iTunes.  iTunes will open and a new podcast will appear called Car Talk.  It is possible to then download many or just the latest episode.  As new episodes are “aired” they will automatically be downloaded (Read, 2005).

When used in a classroom situation, podcasts tend to contain supplementary material and are often quite short.  Because of this brevity, they can be produced quicker and can be very timely and relevant.  For example, an instructor may have office hours, and notice a particular question arising over and over.  The instructor could quickly record that same question with it’s solution and add it into the podcast, where subscribed students would see that there is new content to watch.

 

One thing to keep in mind when choosing to podcast or course cast content is, if a person can view it on their computer, they can copy it and redistribute it or alter it.  If one is more concerned about the physical loss of their material, rather than the numerous other benefits that come with this form of dissemination, they probably will not want to engage in this practice. Note too that streaming and passing out DVDs offer up little more for protection and do expose users to the same risks.

 

Course Casting

Course casts are podcasts that capture entire lectures for a specific course and make them available either solely to the currently enrolled students or extend to unlimited global access.    These recording can also be strictly audio, video, or what is referred to as “rich media capture.”  Rich media capture is a video camera, lecture hall audio both from the instructor and any media that plays, and screen capture of whatever is running through the room’s projector.  The device used for capture can be as simple as a typical digital audio recorder that students use, or as complicated as a fully switched TV production.  A middle ground that many universities, including Stony Brook University, are pursuing, comes from lecture capture systems.  One of the  key advantages that Stony Brook’s chosen lecture capture system holds, is its transparency for the instructors.  As long as the instructor is teaching in one of the equipped classrooms, all they need to do is contact the Teaching, Learning + Technology department and all recordings for the semester are scheduled without need of any further action by the instructor. (Educational Technology, 2009)

Lecture capture systems record and archive content delivered in the classroom, including audio (such as the faculty member's lecture), computer feeds (the presentation), and sometimes video (the faculty member doing work on the whiteboard). The student can then review the class and search its contents later via a browser on a computer or as a file downloaded to some other kind of device (Schaffhauser, 2009).

 

Considering that a well staffed and funded department could implement a rich media capture system in house, if the department decided to outsource it to one of these turn key solutions, the process for converting lectures into podcasts better be intuitive, easy, and able to handle a heavy load (Read, 2007).

 

            Course casts can be used to change the class format from that of the “sage on the stage” to one where active learning is the focus. Aaron Sams, a science teacher from Woodland Park High School explained during an interview with reporter Rosie Barresi from KKTV News 11 “They used to go home . . . they would get stuck, they would call their friend which was ok, they would cheat or they would just give up on it.”  He says now these same students watch the lectures at home, and do their homework during the traditional class time (Barresi, 2008). The students love it and get more time doing hands on activities and one on one time with the instructors.  They also get higher grades.

 

 

Open Courseware (OCW)

Open Courseware is course casting or course modules that are freely open to the world for consumption through the internet.  In addition to recordings of lectures, it may also include handouts, lecture transcripts, reading assignments, exams and  problem sets.  While there's currently no way to take tests that earn credit or gain any official certifications, one for-profit website that started in January, Academic Earth, is gathering many of the free online college courses on one site to make it easier to peruse all the offerings (Clark, 2009).

 

The idea behind MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is to make MIT course materials that are used in the teaching of almost all undergraduate and graduate subjects available on the Web, free of charge, to any user anywhere in the world. MIT OCW will advance technology-enhanced education at MIT, and will serve as a model for university dissemination of knowledge in the Internet age. This venture continues the tradition at MIT, and in American higher education, of open dissemination of educational materials, philosophy, and modes of thought, and will help lead to fundamental changes in the way colleges and universities utilize the Web as a vehicle for education (autounfocus, 2003).

 

In addition to for profit sites like Academic Earth, there are many other websites who’s mission it is to help locate the content that desired.  For example, perhaps taking a class at a university that does not engage in any recordings, but the student needed to be out from class due to a family emergency.  Assuming the student knows the subject of the days lesson that was missed, they can go to a site like folksemantic’s,  OCWfinder (http://ocwfinder.com/), the Open Courseware Consortium (www.ocwconsortium.org... or Zaid’s OCW/OER Search type in the subject, and find another institution’s recordings on the same subject. 

 

            Instructors may want to use some of this freely available content in their own course, and this is encouraged.  Some sites, like Rice’s Connexions, sort content not by one linear course, but by topic.  This allows the instructor to mix and match and reuse materials to suit their own syllabus. “Why re-invent the wheel? When people share their knowledge, they can select from the best ideas to create the most effective learning materials. The knowledge in Connexions can be shared and built upon by all because it is reusable” (Connexions, 2009).

 

Philosophies of Open Courseware

As there are many institutions of higher education that are participating in various forms of OCW, one may wonder what they have in mind.  After all, it can be argued that their primary business is to deliver the same types of content at a cost. Rice University breaks their philosophy on the subject into four areas: the approach, content delivery, sharing, and collaboration.  They have also opened the site, Connexions, to the world, so that anyone can add content.  “Our Content Commons contains educational materials for everyone — from children to college students to professionals — organized in small modules that are easily connected into larger collections or courses. All content is free to use and reuse”.  They endorse a non-linear format for learning, that comes in easily consumed modules.  Creating these modules also allows for mixing and matching pieces.  Instructors or students “can select from the best ideas to create the most effective learning materials.”  For collaborating, Connexions has set-up means for coauthoring, creating derivative works that maintain original attributions, assigning additional individuals to keep up material maintenance, workgroups and even a process by which others can send suggestions. (Connexions, 2009)

At MIT’s OCW site, Susan Hockfield, President of MIT writes, “We do not yet know the full potential of OCW and its ultimate impact on global education. But it is clear to us that by thinking of knowledge as a public good for the benefit of all, and acting on this philosophy through OpenCourseWare, we can make a difference.” She goes on to encourage other universities and individuals to follow and start their own OCW sites (Hockfield, 2009).

 

            Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative (2009) emphasizes the web’s opportunity for them to be able to add assessment into all aspects of the delivery of the free lessons and courses.  “As we deliver the instruction, we use technology to collect real-time interaction level data of all student use. We use this data to create four positive feedback loops.” and adds:

Frequent formative evaluation gives students the type of constructive and timely feedback on progress that is available from individual tutoring sessions but almost always absent from digital learning environments. Continuous evaluation of class performance gives faculty the information they need to effectively modify or supplement instruction to meet learning objectives. (Open Learning Initiative, 2009)

 

Considerations for an Instructor Before Course Casting

As we have discussed, one can record content and make it solely available for the class they are currently teaching.  This is an old tried and true method, and once upon a time your tape recordings may have been held on reserve in the library.  In this instance instructors hardly have to concern themselves with altering any content for legal concerns.  Once  an instructor decides to open their course content up for the larger global audience, they will have to worry about not only their own presentation containing other people’s copyrighted materials, but they will need to concern themselves with who owns the material they have created.  This alone is enough of a headache that many will decide to not go down this path.  MIT has staff whose job it is to scrub through the recorded lectures and look for and sometimes recreate content that is under an outside parties copyright.  Most universities do not have an educational technology group large enough to handle this sort of endeavor. “Teachers, principals, and students all need to understand not only the basics of US copyright law as they relate to the creation and publication of media products, but also the opportunities presented for LEGAL remixing and reuse of media materials licensed through Creative Commons.” (Fryer, 2009) This advice and that which follows should always be verified with appropriate legal consultation and mainly applies to current US laws.

 

Fair Use and Copyright

Fair Use is the use of any copyrighted material such as text, sound or images, and using it in news reporting, parody, criticism, commentary or teaching.  As such, fair use of these sorts of materials is not an infringement of laws regarding copyright.   Other factors talked about in the Podcasting Legal Guide (Vogele & Garlick & Berkman Center 2006) that contribute to judicial decisions regarding copyright and fair use include, the purpose and character of your use (this is sometimes called the “transformative factor” and relates to whether commentary, criticism, or parody was the point of using the content); the nature of the copyrighted work (e.g., is the work highly creative fiction warranting broader protection, or is it highly factual warranting narrower protection?); the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, (as compared both to the underlying work and the work in which the copying is used); and the effect of the use upon the potential market (e.g., did the copyrighted work lose market share or potential market share?

 

One example of fair use that may occur in course casting is a department wants to have a standard look and feel to all of their recordings.  They create an intro and credits with their logos, and they all have the same standard fonts.  In addition they use music from an instrumental section of a Norah Jones song to give it a professional polished touch. The recording itself isn’t about the Jones music, nor does it comment or critique it. This would most likely not be fair use.

 

Another instance would be when the english department does a series of podcasts about 50’s poetry, including specific works by Allen Ginsberg.  The recording includes portions of the poetry read aloud, and a long discussion of it’s merits and a general analysis.  There is no advertising and no revenue from the recording.  This example would most likely fall under fair use.

 

Creative Commons

One way of finding non-original content that you can use without worrying about copyright or whether or not one has fair use, is by finding Creative Commons or CC-licensed materials.  This content has been marked for licensing that clearly states what is needed to use it.  You can find this content at the creativecommons.org website or look for a statement or icons indicating the license attached to the media in question.  Examples:

  (Creative Commons, 2009)

where the first is attribution, second is noncommercial, third is share alike, fourth is no derivative works, and the last is an item in the public domain. These logos can be mixed and matched, so you could indicate the second and the forth to say, this item is licensed for non-commercial use and no-derivatives are allowed.  Appendix B has a chart showing license compatibility regarding the ability to derive new content from the existing licensed media:

 

Also note, that CC licenses have no baring on the fair use rights that are applicable to any  copyrighted materials as previously discussed.

One other thing to consider in creating original course casts or other instruction materials, is whether one wants to enable the content for others to use by licensing materials for others to reuse.  It is important to make sure that one really is the original rights holder, to familiarize themselves with all the different permutations of creative commons licensing, and that they are sure about what they decide.  “Creative Commons licenses are non-revocable. This means that you cannot stop someone, who has obtained your work under a Creative Commons license, from using the work according to that license.” (Creative Commons, 2009 )

 

Intellectual Property

Finding out about one’s own institutions legal stance regarding intellectual property will be a big consideration to make for most instructors.  Open courseware consortium (2009) suggests some questions you will want to have addressed including: Does your institution consider faculty teaching materials to be the property of the faculty member or of the institution? What process does your institution want you to follow in your use of institution-owned content? How concerned is your institution with its own branding and/or the appearance of endorsement? What is your institution's stance on fair use in the classroom? Outside the classroom? What types of legal language does your institution want you to use in license requests? To what types of privacy laws is your institution subject?

To give an idea of what to expect, it is highly recommended to look at other institution’s published policies, but one would will still need to check with your own legal counsel.  For example, The University of Texas (2006) states that, specifically regarding multimedia courseware and distance learning materials, work is likely to be jointly owned by the employee and the board.  Bringham Young University (2009) specifically, however, says, “any work (whether a technical work or a creative work) prepared by university personnel within the scope of their employment is work for hire owned by the university.” Perhaps the odd man out, Virginia Commonwealth University (2007) gives more rights to the authors of the teaching content stating, “generally, the ownership of the copyright interest in a work vests initially in the author of that work.” and has an interesting rider to help protect the student’s learning interests; “in the event that a faculty member terminates employment with the University with less than 3 months notice, the University shall have . . . license to use course materials created and owned by the faculty member for a period not to exceed 6 months.” Many institutions that allow for author rights have a tendency to revoke those rights once the instructor is seen as using a substantial and of course defining “substantial” varies widely, amount of university resources, such as audio-visual staff, television studios, or equipment.  In the end, “If professors and administrators cannot reach an agreement on intellectual-property matters, a campus wide podcasting project might not be a good idea” (Read, 2007).

 

Assessment of Course Casting

At Stony Brook University, Ying Xiong (2009),  the Faculty Center assessment specialist,  in an Innovation in Education Colloquium, talked about how she has been holding student focus groups and online surveys to “explore and describe the relationship between student learning and the use of course recordings in a large-sized class.”  I was on a panel with her at the 2009 Colloquium, where she was able to present her findings. 

 

She ran assessments both at the Stony Brook University main campus and the Southampton Campus.  Of 39 main campus focus groups, 35 of them mentioned course recordings as something about the class that was helpful.  From the same data, only two groups mentioned the textbook, and three mentioned review sessions and teachings assistants.  Southampton’s students all sited course recordings as being beneficial.

 

From the survey results, 91% of students viewed the course recordings.  Of the 9% who said they did not watch the recording, the reasons were that they either attended all of the lectures or they preferred to read the materials over watching video.  This result emphasizes that it is important to remember that different people have different learning styles.

 

In the survey, (Xiong, 2009)  it was also asked how they used the recordings. However, the students were expressing thoughts that the course recordings were not a replacement for coming to class.  “It is difficult to pay attention to the screen for 50 minutes, and impossible to ask questions,”  another student wrote, “Communication, the key for fully understanding professors, the concepts, and the information, is missing in the recordings.”  (Xiong, 2009) concluded from these remarks that this meant that students would not except course casting as a replacement for lectures, nor would it have a major impact on attendance in class.

Assessment information from both this study and a 2006 UCLA study can be found in appendixes C-G.  It contains results pertaining to how students answered questions about usage of recordings, impacts on class attendance, affects on learning course information and responses regarding whether students felt it would be beneficial in additional classes.  Appendix D specifically highlights survey information of common statements students made when asked to say something pertaining to the lecture recordings.

 

OCW and the Value of the College Degree

One of the very first and notable statements on MIT’s (About OCW, 2009) “About OCW” page is, “OCW is not an MIT education.”   With so much of the content from universities available online for free, some people may question exactly what an MIT education is and for what are the students paying huge amounts of money?  The answer seems to lie in the institution’s accreditation.

 

  Accreditation is the approval of an educational institution or program by an official review board that sets rules and guidelines for educational institutions and standards. Accredited status is one of the most important factors in determining the legitimacy of any college or university (South University, 2009).

 

OCW is not a form of paid online or distance learning education, and almost universally gains one no credits or certifications.  For now, a degree, gained first through admissions testing, paying tuition, passing your coursework and leaving with a piece of paper, is the gold standard for career advancement.  “American workers with a bachelor's degree earned about $26,000 more on average in 2008 than those with only a high school diploma” (Austin Business Journal, 2009). Yet, today costs to attend college and get these degrees, particularly those from ivy league schools that traditionally yield the best long term outlooks for alumni success, are becoming so burdensome that some are questioning the logic.  “Put another way, Does earning potential conferred by a college degree outweigh the up-front costs that will force the average student in the Class of 2009 to graduate $21,500 in debt?” (Steffan, 2008)  The math alone, at least for the moment, still points to yes.  Additionally, individuals with college degrees also have the benefits of a longer life span, greater economic stability and security, greater community service and leadership, more prestigious employment and greater job satisfaction, less dependency on government assistance, greater participation in leisure and artistic activities, and more self-confidence. (Hansen, 2009)

It becomes harder, however, to discern whether consuming these free courses online, even if they of absolutely the highest quality and completely capable of conveying the very tools and knowledge needed in a job, give the user any benefits whatsoever in actually attaining said job or reaping any of the other benefits mentioned above.  It makes sense that, given the fact that most people in American society understand that it is beneficial to get a college degree, the smartest people also tend to get these credentials, because they are aware of the ramifications.  They may be very interested in all of this freely available information that is online, but they are intelligent enough to know that “it’s the credential that employers seem to value and not the employee’s intelligence.” (Half Sigma, 2006)

Any person watching OCW should go into it understanding that it is a great tool for review, study, gathering an alternative perspective on a topic, and even collecting resources for their own course, but it is not and was never meant to be a replacement for an American citizen getting an accredited education.  Its use in under developed nations however is entirely a different matter.

 

Implications for Developing Countries Using Open Courseware

For a nation that would like to see its citizens enter the modern era of development and technology, all the resources available online certainly seem like a boon.  However, there will inevitably be issues regarding the costs of equipment, internet access, ability to use the technological tools and guidance for which online lessons may lead to a real job locally. (Angelino, Williams, & Natvig, 2007).

 

Infrastructure that Americans take for granted such as electrical and telecommunications needs affect not only government and  economic growth (), but also growth in the educational sector (Fay & Morrison, 2007; Wright, Dhanarajan, & Reju 2009). In June 2007, Kenya’s Education Minister, Professor George Saitoti, stated that approximately 80% of the primary schools and 35% of secondary schools were not connected to the power grid (Ngare, 2007).

 

The eGranary Digital Library (see http://www.egranary.org), an initiative organized out of  the University of Iowa, enables people in developing countries with limited resources to access recent information without incurring Internet charges or struggling with limited or non-existent bandwidth (Jeffrey, 2007).  “These servers provide access to information that can be up to 5,000 times faster than the satellite links that are used primarily in Africa and the South Pacific. They are currently located in institutions in Africa, Bangladesh, Haiti, and India.” (Wright, et al., 2009)

In addition to simply receiving the free or largely free content, there are also efforts in place to contextualize the information for the local populations. 

 

The African Virtual University (AVU, see http://www.avu.org/) aims to provide world-class quality education and training programs to educators in Africa as well as undergraduate and remedial academic courses. One of the major challenges is to adapt course materials developed in an affluent Western context to the educational environment in Africa. According to Lou Siragusa of Curtin University ofTechnology in Australia, material that has been adapted successfully must balance Australian, international, and African perspectives. It must allow students to reflect on the knowledge in their own countries, yet enable them to draw on expertise and experience from other countries. (Wright et al., 2009)

Likewise, there are also groups whose efforts are on translation of the available content into other languages.  MIT (2009b) has a number of groups, such as Universia (Spanish, Portuguese), CORE (Simplified Chinese), Opensourse Opencourseware Prototype System (Traditional Chinese), Chulalongkorn University (Thai) and Shahid Beheshti University (Persian).  They also outline the Creative Commons licensing agreement that they have that allows further translations to be produced.

 

From this examination of the literature, a robust understanding of what course casting is, what its pitfalls and hopes are, how it can help, and how it can get one in trouble should all be clear.  It is this researcher’s belief that its promise to knowledge and education is greater than the inconveniences and fears that instructors currently face by diving into the technology. Course casting has the potential to bring students back and engage them, even in the largest classes, by moving the lecture out and bringing active learning back into the class period when the student is  with their instructor - not home alone.  It also has a broader impact that could prove invaluable as people from underdeveloped countries gear up to join the larger industrialized and computerized global society.

 

It will be several years before we know whether the enormous promise of OCW will be realized. The major issues of academic policy, intellectual property rights, organizational structure, and funding that OCW has raised within MIT have only been partly resolved. We hope that as we continue to explore these matters, OCW can serve as a model for similar initiatives at other universities around the world. (Lerman et.al, 2002)

 

Education is a vital part of the whole globe’s ability to progress, understand and interact together.  Open course casting is freeing the world’s faculty to engage content, not as mere facts, but as tools and resources that have real affects on the world.  Given time and better understanding, this  should help bring about a better tomorrow for everyone.

 

 

Appendix A

 

 

 

 

Appendix B

Key to Abbreviations:

by = attribution only

by-nd = Attribution-NoDerivivatives

by-nc-nd = Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives

by-nc = Attribution-NonCommercial

by-nc-sa = Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

by-sa = Attribution-ShareAlike

pd = Dedicated to or certified to be in the public domain

 

 

 

 

Appendix C

 

 

 

 

 

Appendix D

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Appendix E

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Appendix F

 

 

 

 

Appendix G

 

Appendix H

 

References

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