Media Publishing in Distance Teaching
Firoz Kaderali
(Institute of Communication Systems
FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany
firoz.kaderali@fernuni-hagen.de)
Heinz Müller
(Centre for the Development of Distance Education (ZFE)
FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany
heinz.mueller@fernuni-hagen.de)
Andreas Rieke
(Institute of Communication Systems
FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany
andreas.rieke@fernuni-hagen.de) Abstract:
MediaPublishing is an
application project within the BERKOM programme. More and more
publications for different target groups are produced on multimedia
basis. By using high speed communication networks and standardized
protocols, distributed applications and scenarios for planning,
editing, production and partially also for usage of multimedia
publications became possible. In the realisation and test of such
complex, distributed production chains for the development of media in
distance teaching lies the goal of the project MediaPublishing. The
first course produced with the editorial environments and
communication facilities now in progress is "Technical data security
in communication networks". Key Words: multimedia development, media
publishing, online systems in distance teaching Category: H.5 1
1 Multimedia Development
1.1 Intentions of an Application Project within
the DeTeBerkom
MediaPublishing is the acronym for an application
project concerned with multimedia publishing. It is primarily
established in the telepublishing area. Publishing is one of the most
innovative industries in the introduction and usage of new computing
and communication technologies. Its development started with printing
books by Gutenberg and it had its last highlights with the entry of
desktop publishing (DTP). But publishing does not only mean creating
and distributing printed materials, in a broader sense it means media
development and distribution of information on the other hand on all
sorts of media like records, cassettes, disks, compact disks and so Page 492
on. The production environments are mostly quite different, the
procedures of development are similar and become more similar everyday
since computing is the common basis to all production
environments. Electronic publishing does no longer differentiate
between processing textual, graphical, pictorial, auditive and
animated information. The starting-point for media publishing is
almost the same as for publishing printed media. The traditional
publishing procedure is well known, but the concepts of desktop
publishing require new strategies in organizational
procedures. Further milestones on the way to modern electronic
publishing announce themselves in terms of printing from computer to
plate, direct imaging, database publishing, printing on demand and
publishing service centre. Experiences in these areas are nowadays
adequately applicable to media publishing. The structure of the
organizations participating in this development process is always
the same: specialists create modules of the totality, publishers,
producers and editors combine them and distributors market them to
consumers. All participants in this scenario are separated from each
other and do their work using computers with a lot of sophisticated
software. All these agents need data, they work on data and they
transmit data. The amount of data has grown with regard to quality and
quantity so that the whole process may not longer be transacted using
parcels containing specific materials like manuscripts, printing
forms, colour-separated outputs, repros and so on. Ambitious
transmission mechanisms are needed to deal with a lot of problems in
this process. The key technology in this domain are flexible and
multifunctional communication networks; however the requirements turn
out to be more difficult than expected. The main providers of
communication networks are telekom companies, this is also the
situation in Germany. DBP Telekom offers several services for
communication purposes. But the adaptations, renovations and
innovations necessary under actual circumstances are immense and
demand high investments. Therefore providers have to observe the
market trends in order to keep the required network facilities up to
date. One of the Telekom's subsidiary companies working in this area
is DeTeBerkom, which resides in Berlin. It sponsors investigations of
new network concepts and applications. MediaPublishing is a project in
this framework. There are a wide range of requirements which were
investigated in the project. However, only the main aims will be
summarized here. Firstly, the situation of distributed editorial
environment for multimedia will be analysed in different application
domains. One of the relevant domains is distance teaching as represented
by the FernUniversität. A second domain is related to the tasks
of a publishing service centre with special emphasis on data
conversion of technical documents. The third domain is concerned with
a publishing company. Both domains are represented in the project by
eps Bertelsmann, Gütersloh. A publishing consulting company, Preprint
in Berlin, participates as a third partner. Secondly, the project
examines the limits, where DTP-like production methods become
inefficient, because the amount of data swells, the demand of
multimedia productions grows Page 493
and the facilitation of multimedia productions increases. Thirdly, a
prototype tool system for distributed media environments is being
developed and tested using existing Telekom networks as well as the
special test bed BERKOM at Berlin. An important aspect of the tool
system is that it is based on already well known existing tools of the
different branches of multimedia development. It has to harmonize
different data formats, device platforms and communication systems. A
further aim is to develop an online system in the distance teaching
area. This aspect will be treated in the second section of this
lecture note.
1.2 Optimal Utilisation of New Media in Distance
Teaching
The potential of new media technology rapidly increases and
awaits being used in distance teaching. As it is true that distance
teaching is a complex issue, advance in media technology will not
automatically mean an improvement in distance teaching. There are two
main reasons why enthusiasm should be limited. Firstly, distance
teaching based on high-quality media requires first class equipment at
the site of learning i.e. at the local workstation of the
students. Fortunately the equipment which can really be accessed by
students nearly keeps up with the progress of technology. The main
problem are the expenses, but they seem to be controllable.
Participants in distance education primarily ask for direct benefits
and they do not hesitate to invest if they expect a rich and
qualitative offer of study materials which will ease their
learning. Investigations show that the local equipment is often of
excellent standard. While consumer's side difficulties of distance
teaching are manageable, problems arise at the other end, i.e. the
suppliers' side. What are the reasons for this imbalance? Let me point
out that traditional distance teaching developed from face to face
teaching by printing the contents of the lessons as lecture notes and
distributing them to remote sites. This process of transfer only
partially affect the subject matter of the courses, but there remain
deficits with regard to interaction, communication and so
on. Experts in distance teaching have tried hard to reduce these
deficits and it seems that multimedia products and new media
applications would be further steps to neutralize the deficits
mentioned. Let us focus on multimedia in distance education. It
became a commonplace headword long before its meaning could be
verified by concrete products using relevant standards. Especially
realisations in distance teaching are a long time in coming while
products from the entertainment industry are gaining ground after a
long period in which the announcements dominated real publishing. I
claim that this is not only due to technical relapses but that it can
be traced to shortcomings of creativity and publishing know-how with
regard to multimedia. Further hindrances were caused by the enormous
amount of financial resources needed for the implementation of the
first multimedia products. It is risky to invest a considerable amount
of resources without knowing whether it will pay off in the long run. Page 494
In distance teaching the problems are intensified by two
facts. Firstly, educational institutions lay claim to develop training
methods and materials under their own responsibility. Teaching at
university level is done by individualists and even course development
teams operate with terms like "authors". But similar to film, multimedia production no longer restricts activities to a small group of
persons but involves several groups with a sophisticated allocation of
tasks and responsibilities. Later on we will show how such a team
might be designed. Secondly, all educational efforts in our society,
in companies, in professional training and even by individuals are
always restricted by certain percentage limits of the respective
budget. Expenditures on hobbies may increase more and more, but those
on multimedia in education must be calculated carefully. The
borderline between public sponsoring of education and private share is
being newly established today.
1.3 Distributed Production Teams in Media Publishing
Within the project MediaPublishing a concrete
multimedia product is being developed at the FernUniversität. At
present the different activities take place at the Centre for the
Development of Distance Education (ZFE) in close cooperation with the
Institute of Communication Systems of the Department of Electrical
Engineering. The final result will be an integrating teaching
software, in future to be distributed on CDs. The subject matter
covers a part of the curriculum of electrical engineering and is
entitled "Technical Data Security in Communication Networks". Up to
now no printed course on this topic is available at the
FernUniversität. Because requirements in multimedia publishing are
very diverse, all qualifications needed are gathered in a joint
venture team. Every member in such a team takes a role on the base of
his professional competence. A selection of roles will be enumerated
now [see Fig. 1], [Fig. 3]. At first there are academics representing
the specialized knowledge of subjects selected. In our multimedia
project they come from the electrical engineering institute mentioned
above. They are responsible for the allocation within the curriculum
of the focused course of study and they have to select the topics in
detail. They draft a treatment of the subject and formulate the items of the course. As a second role the competence of specialists in
teaching methods is required. It is their job to transfer the
treatments into practical multimedia scenarios, e.g. in terms of films
they develop story boards or scripts. Furthermore they facilitate the
dialogue between subject experts and the other specialists. Therefore
they are predestined for the coordinator function with the development
team. The next role is based on the competence in software
engineering. Unfortunately a dream of most multimedia producers is the
realisation with an authoring tool which Page 495
can be mastered by everyone. Our experience showed that authoring
tools are manageable to a certain degree by everyone, but they seldom
solve all the software problems, rather they may create additional
ones. This job in our project was shared by members of the ZFE as well
as by members of the institute.
Figure 1: Flowchart of multimedia developmentText and graphic
designers arrange the outfit of the multimedia product. There is a
tendency to underestimate their roles. We have to recognize that it is
their job to make the products acceptable. User interface is the
place, where acceptance has to be won. Finally multimedia productions
require the competence of AV-media designers. These includes in broad
terms all specialists needed for sound and video production. They are
especially in charge of those media components that emphasize multimedia within the usual media assemble. All the designer functions were
located at ZFE. Page 496
The above characterized multimedia development team represents minimal
staffing and has to be reinforced by double casting of roles or by
engaging external service providers. The inner circle of the
multimedia development team takes care of planning, controlling and
project management and works on individual tasks as far as capacity is
available. In this concept source editing and add-ons like data conversion, data compression and program transposition may be left to
outside suppliers [see Fig. 2]. As long as the provider market is
still developing its ability to its full, we had to improvise in the
project by providing missing features by the inner development team. The multimedia development process results in a vast data collection
on a harddisk runable on Windows computers. These installable runtime
versions will be transferred to a so called golden CD. Special
providers multiply them and make them ready for distribution by
printing labels and by packing in jewelcases.
Figure 2: Function areas and activities in
distributed development
1.4 Technical Environments
The initial premise
of the MediaPublishing project was the intention to preserve the
original development tools of the participating developers and as far
as possible even their device platforms. Let us enhance on this
requirement. The differences between a Mac and a Windows computer and
an OS/2 computer and even a Unix computer are difficult to
overcome. Therefore a common platform must be implemented on top of
the inherent operating system which has to harmonize the different Page 497
access levels and has to provide database as well as communication
facilities. Lotus Notes is such a software tool usually utilized in
office communication. Furthermore Lotus Notes does not affect
authoring tools or other developer's software such as text editors,
graphic and picture processing programs as well as tools for sound and
video manipulation. Thus a format independent data administration can
be organized. Even file viewing is possible under
restraints. Nevertheless developers are well-advised to prefer only
standardized formats within a production. The choice of the authoring
tool is significant too. It is the most important tool for the
development team because it links all the individual elements in
runable modules which on the other hand are bound together to a
runtime version. An excellent authoring system is Authorware, but let
me remark that no software without weaknesses exists; but there at
least cross platform facilities are supported. Within the
MediaPublishing project the central tool system is named DIME, an
artificial abbreviation of DIstributed Media Environment. It is based
on Lotus Notes features and was developed by another project partner,
a computer science institute at TU Berlin. DIME is a network
consisting of servers and clients, which are used for distributed but
integrated storage of process data for multimedia publications [see
Fig. 3]. Therefore the most important component is represented by the
DIME media storage. It is completed by administration facilities like
a tender invitation system, an order management system, a development
database and finally a workflow controlling system. The prototype is
now being tested. Up to now experiences are full of promises, but
speed and handling behaviour seem still to be improvable.
Figure 3: Different roles in MediaPublishingPage 498
Finally let me point out the real distance in space between the
development partners [see Fig. 2]. All members of the inner circle
work at different workstations scattered over various sites. They are
all integrated by a local network system supported by facilities like
file servers and DIME servers. Connection to external DIME users are
established via ISDN-multprotocol-routers, the use of ATM switches is
conceived. In each case the line to external stations works only on
demand in order to limit line charges.
2 Multimedia Online Assignments
2.1 Organizational Environments for Assignments Yesterday and Tomorrow
Communication is an important component of teaching in
every form. At university lectures there is often a professor talking
to many students but, on the other hand, students are able to ask
questions, to discuss the material and to do exercises. Distance
teaching is often restricted to a one-way-communication; a professor
writes a more or less multimedia lecture that is handed out to
students. At the FernUniversität students often work by themselves;
they may not even have the possibility to talk about the material to
each other. The due form of communication is to offer exercises to
students that are corrected automatically by computer or manually by
teachers. At the FernUniversität in many cases the successful solution
of these exercises is a precondition for admission to
examinations. With the corrections students receive a master solution,
which enables them to understand what they did wrong and what may be
done in a more appropriate way. Other possibilities of communication are:
- Questions about the material
- Discussions with other students or teachers
- Criticism and suggestions for improving the study materials.
At the FernUniversität assignments are sent to students by
letter every two weeks. The students have about three weeks to solve
the assignments and to send them back. Several students do this using
a word processing program on a PC. The solution attempts are
corrected and sent back to the students with a copy of a master
solution. This process often takes at least one month. Thus most of
the students already forget the assignments when they finally get the corrections and the master solution. Page 499
Another problem is the money needed: The students are able to send
their solution attempts concerning several courses together in one
letter to the university; at the university these have to be sorted
and sent to the teachers, who send their corrections and master
solutions back to the students individually. So the university has
large expenditure. For the future we propose an online system for
assignments. In multimedia courses students have to work with a
computer anyway, so they can solve the assignments on their computer
and send their solution attempts to the university in a simple and
fast way directly to the responsible teacher.
2.2 Requirements for
Students and Distance Teaching Institutions
The most important medium
for online communication is text; but also pictures (pixel and vector
based images) are needed to describe some contents in an appropriate
way. It is not necessary to support all types of media; for example,
we do not expect that students will be able to produce videos in which
they explain their solution attempts. For reasons of flexibility it
must be possible to attach files to a solution; this may for example
be PASCAL source-code or executable files for programming exercises. In the past and today modems with low data transfer rates are used for
online communication. This solution is sufficient for transmission of
ASCII-texts and small files. For the transmission of images, higher
data transfer rates are necessary, so we recommend to use N-ISDN
(Narrowband-Integrated Services Digital Network). Lots of students do
not have the equipment required for distance learning at home with
online communication. For that purpose, they can use one of the about
60 study centres of the FernUniversität. These study centres are open
usually from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. on workdays and saturday afternoons,
because lots of our students are fully employed. For that reason the
online system should be realised as a mailing-system. It does not
matter whether the teacher is really working at the moment a student
sends his solution attempts; if he is working, his attention will be
called to the mail, otherwise he will be notified the next time he
starts his computer. Teachers like this solution more than for example
being called by telephone: they can have a chance to look at the
material before they need to answer. Every student should get his own
account for this mailing system because it should not be possible that
students have a look at the solution attempts of other students. The
student should be able to decide whether his corrections are to be
sent back the same way or by letter. Page 500
2.3 A Softwaretechnical Approach to an Online System
In the
MediaPublishing project we established an online system for distance
teaching. At the ZFE we installed a Lotus Notes server which holds
databases for exercises and discussions to be accessed by
students. The server can be reached by ISDN and INTERNET [see Fig. 4];
it is possible to connect the server to a modem; however this was not
implemented due to the lower available bitrate compared to ISDN. In
the study centre at Castrop-Rauxel we installed a multimedia PC with a
Notes client and an ISDN connection to a multiprotocol router at the
ZFE, so students without the appropriate technical equipment are able
to work with the system.
Figure 4: Network of the online systemThere are two databases
which can be accessed by students: The assignments and the discussion
database. On opening the assignments database an overview of all
assignments is presented to the user. Assignments seen so far are
marked. By selecting a specific assignment the user is able to have a
look at it; he may then go back or press the button "Solve". Page 501
Before solving an assignment, the user has to write down his name,
registration number and address. He can decide whether the corrections
should be sent back the same way or as a letter. When the user finds
out that the assignment is too difficult for him and he wants to solve
it later, he can go back; otherwise he can press the button "Send" to
send his solution attempt to the teacher. A word processing program
similar to WinWord is included in Notes; it is simple to insert
objects like images into the text; files may also be inserted. If
there is only one teacher for a course, the solution attempts are sent
to his mailbox; if there are more teachers, the mail is sent to the
one who wrote the assignment. The attention of the teacher will be
called to the mail immediately or the next time he starts his
computer. He can have a look at all assignments he received and
correct them and send them back after appending a master solution. If
sent by network the student will receive the corrections immediately
or the next time he connects to the Notes server. Every student has a
unique account to use the system; in our approach there is also an
open account for students who have not yet registered. This open
account may also be useful for anonymous criticism and questions. The
second database serves for discussions; in contrast to the assignments
everyone can write to this database. Students and teachers may ask
questions, may answer questions of other participants and so on. With
every account it is recorded whether a specific entry in the database
has already been read or not; the entries are sorted chronologically
and may be deleted only by the author or the teacher. There are two
problems concerning the communication costs in our implementation: To
save money the B-channel connection(s) in ISDN are switched off after
a given time without communication, but the Notes client normally
checks for new mail after a given period of time. For this check a
B-channel connection has to be established. In the study centre at
Castrop-Rauxel we encountered another problem: although we had only
installed Lotus Notes, the students realised that they had access to
INTERNET via the ISDN connection. They installed FTP and other
applications and used them for communication, resulting in a bill from
DBP-Telekom much higher than expected. In the future we either have to
separate the Notes server from INTERNET or we will only allow
IPX-communication. As an introduction, we presented the multimedia
lecture and the online communication to the students; although the
course in not relevant for examinations, a lot of students
participated in the multimedia lecture and the online assignments. Page 502
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