webcast.berkeleyCapture, Post-Process,& Delivery System

Mara Hancock, Judy SternEducational Technology ServicesUC Berkeley

Webcast Systems App Team

• Project Sponsor: Mara Hancock

• Project Manager: Adam Hochman

• Developers: Josh Holtzman, Sergio Feria, John King

• Interaction Designers: Judy Stern, Daphne Ogle

UC Berkeley Webcast History and Timeline

1995 2001 2002 - 2003 2004 - 2006 2007 2008+

Berkeley MultimediaResearch Center: Faculty Genesis

Educational Technology ServicesFormed and BMRC Webcast Program Merges

ETS updates webcast.berkeley, adds Eventsand admin application

Experiments with captioning and search.Adds podcasting.Delivery partnerships with Apple and Google. Webcast NG vision.

Strategy, design and specs for Webcast NG. Development & outreach.

Open source requirements.

Complete Phase 1 development. Planning for

Phase 2 and WC learning tools.

Webcast Program Today

• 6 webcast and 14 podcast enabled General Assignment Classrooms

• Special Events and Courses

• Open Program

• 83 full courses and over 100 special events in 2007 (over 3500 hours of content)

•webcast.berkeley•On track to exceed 2 million visits•70% increase in visits compared to 2006 (Jan.-Oct.)

•iTunes U (Apr. 06 - Oct. 07) •2.3 Million downloads•31,000 track downloads per week average

•YouTube (as of November 27th)•1.6 million views •8,700 current subscribers

Local and World Audience

May 14, 2007, Georgia State Student:

I have found the pot of educational gold that is your podcast system.

I have been able to compound my education immensely. Dr. Keltner has guided me in my social psychology inclinations. Dr. Muller's Future for Future Presidents has been incredibly enlightening. Your incredible chemistry educational system was better than the chem. lectures my own university is able to provide and I would say that my As in my most recent chem. class can be attributed to your webcast. You have given the world an incredible resource. Please don't take this email as a reason to charge for the service, I would be crushed. I can honestly say that, because I have learned so much from your podcasts, UC Berkeley is by far my first choice for graduate school.

May 14, 2007, Georgia State Student:

I have found the pot of educational gold that is your podcast system.

I have been able to compound my education immensely. Dr. Keltner has guided me in my social psychology inclinations. Dr. Muller's Future for Future Presidents has been incredibly enlightening. Your incredible chemistry educational system was better than the chem. lectures my own university is able to provide and I would say that my As in my most recent chem. class can be attributed to your webcast. You have given the world an incredible resource. Please don't take this email as a reason to charge for the service, I would be crushed. I can honestly say that, because I have learned so much from your podcasts, UC Berkeley is by far my first choice for graduate school.

Feb. 20, 2007: Real Estate Agent, CA: 

I have been listening to your lectures on European Civilization from the Renaissance to the Present via pod cast and wanted you to know how much I appreciate them. It is rare to find such an informed, articulate and interesting speaker. Thank you for making your lectures available to the general public. My only frustration is that, when you periodically ask questions, I find myself eagerly raising my hand to throw out a response. But this is a small price to pay for access to such intellectual joy.  Thank you again and I look forward to our next "class".

Feb. 20, 2007: Real Estate Agent, CA: 

I have been listening to your lectures on European Civilization from the Renaissance to the Present via pod cast and wanted you to know how much I appreciate them. It is rare to find such an informed, articulate and interesting speaker. Thank you for making your lectures available to the general public. My only frustration is that, when you periodically ask questions, I find myself eagerly raising my hand to throw out a response. But this is a small price to pay for access to such intellectual joy.  Thank you again and I look forward to our next "class".

Jan. 30, 2007, someone in the Northeast:  

I’ve enjoyed watching your lectures via webcast so much that I’ve decided to buy your book “practicing democracy.” Your lectures are masterful…  you use humor, you infuse it with anecdotes and biography, but most importantly, it’s enjoyable. I really wish I could’ve been there to take your spring 2006 course on Germany. I wonder how you would’ve described Bismarck, someone I found really interesting. I hope Berkeley will decide to record and broadcast your other courses.

Jan. 30, 2007, someone in the Northeast:  

I’ve enjoyed watching your lectures via webcast so much that I’ve decided to buy your book “practicing democracy.” Your lectures are masterful…  you use humor, you infuse it with anecdotes and biography, but most importantly, it’s enjoyable. I really wish I could’ve been there to take your spring 2006 course on Germany. I wonder how you would’ve described Bismarck, someone I found really interesting. I hope Berkeley will decide to record and broadcast your other courses.

April 4 2007, 25 yr old Estonian:  The reason of contacting you is not only giving you a thumbs up and telling you that the German invasion to Poland (which started the WWII and you refer to as an almost non-violent resistance) was on September 1st 1939 and not "somewhere in 1940" but also to ask whether there would be any ways for me to participate in NV work and actions under supervision to gain understanding and knowledge before trying to do something myself which I feel would fail miserably at the moment.

I am a 25 year old college drop-out, ex IT pro and currently without any duties willing to travel and to help a good cause.

April 4 2007, 25 yr old Estonian:  The reason of contacting you is not only giving you a thumbs up and telling you that the German invasion to Poland (which started the WWII and you refer to as an almost non-violent resistance) was on September 1st 1939 and not "somewhere in 1940" but also to ask whether there would be any ways for me to participate in NV work and actions under supervision to gain understanding and knowledge before trying to do something myself which I feel would fail miserably at the moment.

I am a 25 year old college drop-out, ex IT pro and currently without any duties willing to travel and to help a good cause.

May 22 2007, UK Taxi Driver:  I think this the greatest idea in education ever.

My question is can somebody enroll and take the entire course over the internet. I am a taxi driver in England the UK. I enjoyed this podcast so much that I would like very much to learn economics but with a family and a job classroom attendance is not an option at the moment. I can spare a lot of time in between jobs sat at taxi ranks or otherwise.Thank you, this is not only very enlightening but also very well presented.

May 22 2007, UK Taxi Driver:  I think this the greatest idea in education ever.

My question is can somebody enroll and take the entire course over the internet. I am a taxi driver in England the UK. I enjoyed this podcast so much that I would like very much to learn economics but with a family and a job classroom attendance is not an option at the moment. I can spare a lot of time in between jobs sat at taxi ranks or otherwise.Thank you, this is not only very enlightening but also very well presented.

Looking toward the future

• How can we do more better?• How can we make access easier?• How can we make the content more discoverable?

• How can we share with other schools?• How can we make the content and context more meaningful?

• How can we leverage the innovation from other universities and community source projects?

Needs & Barriers• Expectations and Popularity

■ Incoming Freshman Consider Podcasting Essential Service

■ Students and Public want more portability, quality, and quantity (No Real Media!)

• Growing our Program

■ Estimated 70 rooms in 5 years

■ Approx. 1000 courses eligible. 1/3 of Undergrad Catalog

■ Increase in Events services and distribution offerings

• Barriers■ Patchwork quilt solution

■ Costs of scalable vendor solutions

■ Proprietary code, limited integration

■ Need a solid foundation with flexible toolset

■ Other systems not built to play

Scalability issues: Administration• Participation Management is manual process: time-consuming, tedious, involving multiple systems and sites, and error-prone

• Trimming (required for publishing each lectures) requires hand entry of time code

• Branding content and transcoding to external distribution channel formats too labor intensive

• Lack of good monitoring and alert systems means too many “fires” to put out

Scalability Issues: Infrastructure• Not built for high volume post-processing of video and audio

• Reliance on unreliable streaming technologies

• No flexibility for archive capture and transcode to different formats

• No monitoring of various key components so if failure occurs, difficult to know what went wrong

• Does not take full advantage of campus network and storage systems

• Absence of distributed architecture so if one component breaks down, the entire system fails

• Ties together Podcast Producer, Sakai, iTunes U, and You Tube

• Automated classroom capture (Store and Forward)

• Real time monitoring

• Central transcoding with Xgrid

• Automated branding and delivery to multiple distribution channels

• Enterprise integration with campus systems

• Online approval by instructors

Next Generation System

Decision to Build not Buy• Lower Cost

■ Most enterprise level systems too costly, especially for a scaled approach

■ Inexpensive systems require instructor action, no Mac support

■ Proprietary hardware requirements for some systems

■ No annual licensing fees■ Allows us to leverage existing components (Podcast Producer & Sakai)

• Satisfies Business Requirements■ No systems take into account our complex business rules for participation management (eligibility, inviting, approval)

Participation Management Current

Participation Management NG

Lecture Processing Current

?

Lecture Processing NG

Road Map: Fall 2008 Pilot (Phase I) • Automated Capture, Branding, & Delivery to YouTube,

iTunesU, and local distribution channel

• Integration with Campus Registrar (automated metadata harvesting)

• Participation Management (system identifies who should be invited and provides simple mechanism for inviting many at once)

• Digital Course & Event Approval within Sakai

• Administration tools live within Sakai

• Screencasts

• Downloadable video content

• Real time monitoring success/failure for audio and video capture, post process, and delivery

• System feedback to communicate issues or custom messages to public, faculty, students, as well as content managers.

Possibilities beyond Fall 2008• Automated media enrichment such as enhanced podcasts and searchable content

• New roles: ■ IT Administrative role for adding courses, monitoring rooms, adding roles, etc.

■ Student assistant role for quality assessment, copyright review, and trim.

■ Trusted sources role for contributing content to distribution channels

■ Support role for accessing information needed to help inform support issues

■ Client role to track special event jobs and current/former assets

• Additional Administration capabilities■ Automated adjustments to compensate for audio range and level issues.

■ Live streaming utility for courses to monitor audio levels■ Live Streaming of Courses for Real Time Transcriptions

Possibilities beyond Fall 2008, cont’d• Tools for instructors

■ Content management tools for syllabus entry, distribution, copyright, and content integration into existing Sakai tools

■ Stats tools

• Sakai-only podcasts and webcasts

• Portable podcast capture setups for semester long encoding of courses

• Faculty submission of user generated content using Podcast Producer UGC features

• Integration with transcription service for tying content to transcription

• Development of dynamic media editing tools

• Social tagging for public and Sakai course content

• Branded special event sponsor sites

• Scheduling mechanism to use podcast capable rooms for informal student and staff events

OpenCast Community• A community centered around open, scalable, and sustainable podcast/webcast solutions and best practices for higher education

• Joining OpenCast's Efforts ■ UC Berkeley is interested in finding partners to join our efforts and contribute to or implement OpenCast on their campus.

■ Wiki: http://confluence.media.berkeley.edu/confluence/x/AoEl

OpenCast Community• Levels of Engagement

■ Join our mailing list and share your thoughts! podcast@lists.berkeley.edu

■ Pilot UC Berkeley's system■ Seek additional funding with UC Berkeley and/or volunteer resources for a broader open source initiative

■ Requirements Gatherings■ First one was in October■ More to come…