Putting "Real" Lectures on the Web

By

Delbert L. Hall, Ph.D.

East Tennessee State University

In 1997, a faculty member at my university complained to me being asked to teach an online biology course. "I just want to give my lectures that same way I’ve always done them. I should not have to completely revamp the course and everything about it, just because it is taught via the Internet," he told me. Having spent his entire lifetime taking classes and now teaching in traditional classroom settings, the ideal of teaching an Internet-based course seemed to equate to be asked to teach his classes in a foreign language that he did not know how to speak. When he taught hearing-impaired students he had not had to learn American Sign Language. The university provided signers for this function. But, no one was going take his lectures and help him create the online course materials for his class. He explained that he was a biologist, not a computer programmer, so why should he spend countless hours learning to communicate via the computer so that a few students could take his course from their homes instead of coming to his class?

As this faculty member poured-out his frustration about what he had been asked to do, I felt sympathy for him. I knew the man and knew that this was not a lazy individual, but one that saw this task as a waste of his time. Time that he wanted to devote to his research and to the vast majority of the students that he would teach in traditional classes. He wanted to be innovative and he wanted to help his department expand into new areas, but this just seems like an incredible amount of work with very little reward. As much as I wanted to help him I did not have a solution for his problem.

In July 1998, I agreed to teach a course in Introduction to Theatre over the Internet be next semester. Remembering the plea for help that had been put to me about a year earlier by the biologist, I began investigating possibilities for helping me put my lectures on the Internet without spending huge amounts of time on the course. Since I would also be teaching a section of Introduction to Theatre via Instructional Television (ITV) during the same semester I would be teaching the Internet based section of this course, I wondered if there was a way to combine these two sections. I knew that several courses at East Tennessee State University are presented via videotape. Students in these courses go to the library and view videos that are made of their instructor’s lectures. One solution to the problem above might have been to create videos of the lectures and place them on the Internet using one of the streaming video technologies. Although this sounds good, the reality of video over the Internet was still a long way from being practical. Products such as Microsoft NetShow, VDO, RealNetworks' RealMedia and others have improved the size and quality of streaming video in recent years. But still, video images broadcast over the Internet are usually small and fuzzy compared to TV images, and are not suitable for displaying detailed drawings or text information needed in teaching.

My investigation lead me discover that there were several software products that would allow me to turn PowerPoint presentations, along with a recorded audio track, into online presentations. Since I had extensive PowerPoint presentations to accompany my lectures for this course, this seemed to be a good option. Also, I had done some successful work streaming audio over the Internet using the RealAudio Server and felt comfortable with this technology. Two of the programs I investigated allowed large, detailed images to be displayed over the Web, and also allowed the user to "pause" the presentation, or start the presentation at any point desired. And one of these programs allowed the users to view these presentations from their Web browser without the need of a special client that had to be purchased. Fortunately, this program, AudioPoint by Competitive Edge Software, was also the most reasonably priced of all of the products I investigated.

AudioPoint gets it name from the two programs that it uses to help create online presentations – RealAudio and PowerPoint. About three weeks before the beginning of Fall semester, I purchased AudioPoint and began creating test presentations. AudioPoint has two parts: an Encoder for keeping track of the time each slide in the PowerPoint presentation is displayed, and a PostProcessor for creating the actual online presentation files. I experimented with different image sizes for the presentation and different audio qualities. The images in the presentation are created in PowerPoint using the "Save as HTML" feature. After a little experimentation, I settled on making my images 512 x 384 pixels (half size of 1024 x 768) JPG images. This size images filled most of the screen when the monitor resolution was set to 640x480 or 800x600, two common resolution sizes. I also settled on encoding my sound at 8.5 kps. This size was small enough to stream well over the Internet while having a respectable sound quality. With a little practice (I only created three test presentations before the beginning of the semester) I developed my skills for creating online presentations with AudioPoint.

During the semester, I created fourteen lectures that were presented over the Internet. During my class that was broadcast over Instructional Television, I used the AudioPoint encoder to record the time each slide in my PowerPoint presentation that was displayed. This was done as I made my presentation to the students in this class. AudioPoint also recorded my cursor movements on the screen when I used the cursor to point to items on specific slides during the presentation. As I gave the presentation, the lecture was also recorded on videotape. I used this videotape to later encode the audio using RealEncoder 3.0, a free utility from Real Networks. Because the audio was created at the same time the encoder recorded the timings of the PowerPoint presentation, I was able to later synchronize these together. Next, the AudioPoint PostProcessor was used to create the processed audio file (an .RM file that will stream over the Internet using RealServer 5.0) and an array of other files needed to create the online presentation. A typical online lecture for my course lasted about one hour and took about 8 Meg of storage space on my hard drive. Neither AudioPoint nor RealAudio limits the length of your online presentations.

Students in the class clicked on links on the class Web page to select the lecture that they wished to see and hear. This launched a Web page with an embedded player and automatically started the selected presentation. AudioPoint does require the user to have either RealPlayer 5.0 or RealPlayer G2. Both can be downloaded free from RealNetwork's Web site http://www.real.com.

AudioPoint2, the current version, does not work properly with the RealServer G2, only RealServer 3.0 and RealServer 5.0. However, the G2 player, the newest version of RealPlayer, will play files streamed from RealServer 5.0. A new version of AudioPoint that will work with the RealServer G2 is planned for release in the summer of 1999. Free versions of RealNetworks' RealServers are available from their Web site at http://www.real.com.

AudioPoint worked extremely well for my needs. Creating my online lectures was easy and took relatively little time since the big job of creating the PowerPoint presentation was already done, and the audio was recorded when I gave the presentation to my ITV class. The students in this class reported great success in getting the lectures. In fact, many students in my ITV class also reported watching and listening to these lectures over the Internet when they missed the regular lecture. More information on AudioPoint can be found on the company's Web site at http://www.cesoftware.com.

Delbert L. Hall, Ph.D.

East Tennessee State University