Abstract: The term "multimedia on the web" evokes expectations of web-based presentations with sound and video. However, significant barriers exist today for the professor or teacher who wishes to create their own audio/video course content. Streaming Audio is a web-based technology available today: easy to learn, inexpensive to produce, and available to off-campus students with only a 28.8 Kb connection to the Internet. This article contains a detailed pedagogical discussion of its use and links to complete instructions.
During the summer of 1999 I spent some time learning how to produce web-based multimedia presentations for my classes. I had seen such presentations on corporate sites in the form of "streaming media." They had looked and sounded very good when I viewed them over my university’s T1 Internet connection.
After spending a week making some very simple files, however, I decided not to proceed further with Streaming Audio/Video, for two reasons. First, the technical skills needed to produce all but the very simplest streaming video are considerable. Though it’s easy to "capture" (convert from VHS videotape format to digitized file format) a straightforward video clip, the editing skills needed for all but the simplest videos – cutting, splicing, fade-in and –out, adding titles and captions, synchronizing with sound and so on – require considerable practice and time to learn.
Second, audio/video (A/V) files are too large to "stream" fluently over a modem connection to the Internet, whether 28.8 or 56 Kb. There are many pauses, and the video motion is jerky, making presentations unusable in a course for students who prefer to work off-campus. Though these problems are eliminated when the A/V file is viewed in an on-campus computer lab, I felt I could not justify forcing my students to use already overcrowded labs.
However, I discovered that, while A/V presentations did not "stream" to a 28.8 Kb modem connection fluently enough to be usable, audio alone did stream very well, at all but the busiest Internet times. Furthermore, the software required creating the digitized "streaming audio" files is free, as is the software required to listen to them. Finally, the software is very easy to use – a teacher can be making a Streaming Audio file after 10 minutes practice.
In this article I will explain how I integrate Streaming Audio technology into my own courses. At the end I’ll give enough instructions both for downloading the software needed and for creating a Streaming Audio lecture or other presentation for your class.
"Streaming Audio" refers to a file format and software which permits a long audio (or A/V) file to be "played" without the listener having to first download the entire file – something that could take an hour or more and occupy several megabytes of drive space for a long lecture. A quarter- or half-minute of the file is preloaded into a "buffer", which the player software uses while more of the file is "streamed" in advance. This permits a very long file to be played continuously after only a few seconds’ delay for buffering.
There are several formats for Streaming Audio. I use the RealAudio [.rm] format, the current industry standard.
Sound files can be made in many formats other than RealAudio's Streaming RM format. I think Streaming is preferable for several reasons:
At present I use Streaming Audio in three ways:
I have found that making my own lectures available for remote listening and study by my students has been the biggest benefit to my classes. Here is how:
Years ago I basically abandoned formal lecturing as making students too passive, and changed my teaching style to small-group work. During class, students work in groups of between four and six, beginning with assignments I have given them beforehand to study and write on (all my classes are web-based). I go from group to group as a mentor asking questions, refocusing discussion when needed, and listening a lot. Most classes end with a "large-group" discussion, with the whole class in one large circle, during which students share the results of their small-group discussions.
However, there is still some material I feel I must present in lecture format. True, I could just write it all down, make it available on a web page as yet another reading assignment, and do without lectures altogether. For many reasons, however, I believe that presenting material in different formats, including as lectures, where the student can hear a real "voice" behind the material, hear the intonations, learn to make notes from a talk rather than from a text, can lead to better learning, or at least to a different path to learning.
I dislike the passivity of students as they listen to an extended presentation, and resent spending one of our few and precious classroom hours in this way. Streaming Audio makes it possible to present a lecture without taking up classroom time in lecture-form presentation. Furthermore, when used as I describe, Streaming Audio challenges the inherent authoritarian nature of the lecture format, which is typically presented with little time for interactive question-and-answer or discussion to a large audience, only a few of whose members would be able to engage in these activities anyway.
I have made Streaming Audio files of each of the lectures I use in the courses I taught in Fall 1999 (I will explain this process in the Appendix below). I assign students to listen to the lectures as homework, not in class. Thanks to this technology, my students can listen to the lecture whenever they want. The lecture is available as a link on my web page. Students can pause, backup, and replay the lecture, or parts of it, as many times as they wish, so they can make notes, answer the telephone, make a cup of coffee, and so on. With more time to assimilate the lecture material, they can also think more critically about it -- an activity which a well-designed assignment based upon the streamed lecture should encourage.
I make up one or more web pages for use in conjunction with each lecture, much as I used to make up "handouts". It’s easy to make simple diagrams, when helpful, with a basic graphics program like Windows Paint, and include them in the web "handouts". Students can either look at these pages on line while listening to the lecture, or they can print out the "handouts" and write their lecture notes directly on them. Here is the assignment on my first lecture on "The Medieval World View", with links to the lecture in Streaming Audio, and to the web page "handouts."
Each lecture, with its accompanying web page "handout", is assigned as homework, along with a writing assignment based upon the lecture. My students listen to the lecture, making notes and studying the "handout", and then complete the writing assignment, which they mail to the other members of their discussion group and to me. I keep it for grading purposes. Each student has to read at least one or two of the assignments by others in their group.
At the next class, students are well prepared to discuss the lecture’s contents, raising questions and criticisms with each other. They spend precious class time discussing and interacting, with each other and also with me, rather than sitting back passively listening to me lecture or, at best, actively making notes but without discussion or interaction. I also use Threaded Web Discussion Forums (I use Microsoft FrontPage 98 on a FrontPage server), real-time IRC Chat on our MSU IRC server, and email distribution groups (like small mailing lists) to encourage further critical discussion.
Internet-based teaching can be used to make teaching more interactive, focused more on critical thinking, discussion, and problem-solving, and less on assimilation and retention of "information." With this simple and cheap Streaming Audio technology, I can use all my classtime to enhance student-centered, interactive education.
Here is my tutorial, complete with all necessary links and hints I’ve learned from trial-and-error experience, talking with others, and exploring the web.