Thomas' Work Space

Target language audio and video materials – as well as other textual, multimedia and/or interactive materials – are crucial assets (and should become “reusable learning objects”) in learning centers – how best to manage them?

I have worked for a number of HE institutions, up to the very recent past, that charge their students between $30.000 and $40.000 per year, while their learning materials handling in the learning center consisted of what DVDs and VCR tapes fit into a shoe carton, for a lab assistant to frantically browse through when faced with a learner or teacher request for materials. Not to mention teachers spending inordinate amounts of time scanning stacks of make-believe VCR and DVD “libraries” in the learning center.

I have blogged here before about various solutions that attempt to remedy this: from home-baked stop-gap measures to the introduction of eRepository offerings for digital asset management.

If you are familiar with these issues, you will understand that I am eagerly looking for better help with managing multimedia learning materials. ShareStream claims to provide a turnkey solution addressing these needs. Its architecture – according to the Tulane pilot – consists of a ShareStream server which serves as eRepository and metadata catalogue, a streaming server, and an encoding server (for lecture-capture: YAT (“yet another tag”)). ShareStream also integrates with the Blackboard LMS.

Have a look at the demo of the pilot at Georgetown University which they gave during MAALLT 2010 and which they now also offer workshops on. One interesting thing I figured out during the question period is that they avoid breaking the Digital Millennium Act when digitizing copy-protected DVD materials by capturing to digital only the analog AV output of a DVD – a reminder that a reform of copyright is sorely needed.

If you have a well administered language program, your admin should have uploaded all digital (text, audio, textbook and table of contents) materials that come with your textbook for convenient reuse between sections and terms into the Blackboard content system.

As a Blackboard course administrator, you can easily give all course participants access in 1 step (as course administrator, you can also access the audio materials during classes from the Blackboard content system directly).

Here is a video recording of a real-world walkthrough of this process – voice-over is in German, but Blackboard interface is in English:  blackboard-content-system-finding-adding-existing-content-item-to-course-access-play.wmv

Once you have given course participants access to the audio materials, and you teach the course again next term, it is even easier to roll over the access: Just use the Copy link in the Blackboard Control Panel.

More robust than the more common way using the default network shares of a Sanako Lab 300 – to my knowledge, up to this day Sanako Labs lack any integration with the LMS/VLE regarding the upload of student output – is using the assignment tool of the VLE which provides integration with the Student Information System and an entire infrastructure for assessment purposes (gradebook and beyond).

I know that some teachers use Blackboard email with attachments for assignments, others the blackboard drop-box. some, including me, use the assignment tool which, since it appears to be far superior to the older tools, this post would like to advertise.  It automatically creates a grade center column.  You can batch download student file submission (papers or recordings) and blackboard assignment tool puts the assignment name and the username in the file name for easier management, and you can upload a graded version to return assignments to the student and include comments.  You can also create comments for the instructors only to view.  Faculty can also use track changes and insert more fine-grained comments and corrections within MS-Word.

“c:\myfiles\doc\technology\vle\blackboard\assignments\blog-draft.docx”

We are working on replacing the old attendance meter which is still down:

As you will remember, we have been recording attendance last term and made this data available to you on our new  network share: H:\llc\people\Sign_In_Sheet.xls. To summarize your students attendance, you can filter this data, using standard excel features.

New this term: To help you with this, we added an hard-coded MS-Excel auto-filter (see down-arrows in column headers): filter by course language, then number, then teacher, then the student in question , to summarize during assessment.

We expanded the data validation, so that we get the computer help us processing the data (sort, filter, search…).

Per your request, we added the course number, section and teacher columns to the sign-in sheet (to be manually updated at every term start – a poor man’s integration into the campus information system which had better not be done even by central services, but rather only purchased by them):

Individual teachers can use the built-in filters to drill down to their classes/students for advising/grading.

Individual student can be tracked, together with their time spent in the LLC:

Students enter in the green columns, mostly having to access only built-in shortcuts and selection boxes, while the other columns get updated completely automatically.

To enable students inputting their information directly, we have hacked together a dual screen system in the LLC entrance area. 

We will also use this dual screen system for improving other LLC services, by hooking  into central services. We will ask students with less than clear requests (“My professor wants me to do my homework here, where is it?”) to load their syllabus from blackboard and share their screen with the lab assistant, to assist with (not solve: that would need library resources, meaning professional library catalogue, library professional staff and library professional network and procedures) locating movies and other assigned learning materials.

For the attendance meter, this means: students can enter this information themselves; lab assistants still supervise, and collect the student ID to double check and prevent the cheating that I was approached about to fix with the prior system: signing in for friends, especially with passwords separate from university-wide passwords which there is no reason to keep secret.

Please note that this home-brew spreadsheet-based system is still severely limited in its functionality.

We could POSSIBLY (this would need setup and coordination with various central offices) automate this more, given time for the initial investment.

I have experimented with hooking into the swipe card system. However, students would have to be asked to swipe out also. For other reporting purposes, I have already managed to retrieve this data in this form:

I have experimented with recording log-in (but no log-off) data on the LLC computers (another hack) in a centrally available spreadsheet, in this format:

I have inquired about using Microsoft’s SCCM (a generic software management application not meant for monitoring learning or language learning): We could gather statistics on two LLC-specific programs: the SANAKO media player and the webbrowser.exe (both, however, are likely, but not required to be used for language learning if a student prefers to do the learning in other applications). Neither would record actual files being opened.

All of these approaches, while preventing the most blatant cheating, still would not record actual language learning activity. They do not prevent students from spending their time in the LLC doing unrelated activities (like browsing sports news or playing online games) while they can do their assigned Blackboard and Quia homework from the convenience of their residence.

It is the professional systems that have been programmed with the resources from of revenue of literally thousands of campus-wide installations that can record these language learning activities.

The Sanako language lab software contains a webbrowser.exe which can not only be remote controlled by the teacher, but also be configured to allow only browsing certain (partial) urls or disallow browsing certain urls. it is also possible to apply different policies in different situations. this facility, while part of the package your purchased with the lab, has not been set up as of yet.

It would require developing policies and implementing them. E.g. one could during non-class use of the LLC only allow browsing publisher websites, including Quia.com, and Blackboard.loyola.edu  and Loyola.edu (a radical approach).

One could also explicitly preventing certain websites, like Facebook (this would be more effective during face-to-face session in the LLC).

Then there are the facilities within your textbook websites (Quia) and within your course management (Blackboard, keywords for free tools being: Course Statistics, Statistics Tracking with activity_accumulator, Performance Dashboard, Early Warning System Rules, Adaptive Release rules for content, project ASTRO which is an acronym for Advanced System Tracking and Reporting Online), or as an add-on (Provost Pulse).

With the impetus being on ubiquity these days, it will have to be seen whether there are tools for Blackboard or Quia that can help enforcing that students use specific computers (maybe via IP address of computer?).

Beyond these solutions, there is an entire research area for, and software market revolving around, student retention management which also covers attendance tracking. Notable players include Hobsons EMT^® Retain and Starfish Early-alert (which is run by a former Blackboard VP and can be integrated with Blackboard student data system as a building block).

I suggest we invest our limited local resources into finding better ways to integrate and train on these existing central facilities that provide information on learning (which we then can use to refine our teaching). Given current circumstances, I would recommend exploring the tracking systems in Quia and Blackboard (not restricted to being used on the LLC computers) and tracking learning outcomes (like student language recordings which the LLC can help with – not as much with the digital recording technology which is being commoditized, but rather with providing a language learning shared/collaborative/meeintg space).

I needed to make a large set of textbook mp3 files accessible to myself in the classroom, as well as to students and myself from dorm/home.

The Blackboard Content System makes this easy, while observing copyright restrictions.

Below is a 6-minute narrated screencast on how to set up and use the Blackboard Content System to easily (work on batches of files on the web, just like on your computer, access from office, classrooms or home office) and securely (allow access only to qualified students)  handle multimedia files

The example involves numerous mp3 files from a Textbook Audio CD previously only accessible from the LLC computers)).

This would work as well with your self-created teaching materials, form text handouts to vide recordings.

If you need better management (many files, reuse across terms) than the standard course document upload can provide.

See the video file name for a brief table of contents:

blackboard_content_system_create_webfolder_add_files_grant_permissions_to_students-add-content-collection-to-course.wmv

If the teaching material item is already in the content collection, to publish it to a new course:

1. add a new item to a content area of the course,
2. follow the numbered steps 1-4 in this screenshot:
3. then click submit twice: first close the content system window with , to automatically give your students access to the files: , then finish adding the item with  .

I needed to make a large set of textbook mp3 files accessible to myself in the classroom, as well as to students and myself from dorm/home.

The Blackboard Content System makes this easy, while observing copyright restrictions.

Below is a screencast on how to set up and use the Blackboard Content System to easily (work on batches of files on the web, just like on your computer, access from office, classrooms or home office) and securely (allow access only to qualified students)  handle multimedia files

The example involves numerous mp3 files from a Textbook Audio CD previously only accessible from the LLC computers)).

This would work as well with your self-created teaching materials, form text handouts to vide recordings.

If you need better management (many files, reuse across terms) than the standard course document upload can provide.

See the video file name for a brief table of contents:

blackboard_content_system_create_webfolder_add_files_grant_permissions_to_students-add-content-collection-to-course.wmv