Is Video in Your Future?

I have worked in the printing industry for 35 years, most of that time as an in-plant manager. And though I've thoroughly enjoyed my career in printing, when I was offered the chance six months ago to come to the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch, New Zealand, to lead a new group called the Learning Technologies Support Unit (LTS), I jumped at the opportunity.

Though my work here—overseeing audio visual services, video conferencing services and a video production unit—is much different than what I did as an in-plant manager, there are similarities. And there are also lessons in what I do here that I feel other in-plant managers can learn from.

Like printers, we work behind the scenes. Faculty don't necessarily see what we do, but my team consists of outstanding technical experts. What I'm really proud of is that they are a very service-oriented team. They treat each of the faculty members and students as customers; they try to get out there and make sure things are going well, because they realize the importance of it.

Among the services we provide at LTS are the automated audio and video recording of lectures. We produce short movies and video clips, some of them for marketing to inform prospective students of capabilities, others for creating awareness of university events, but most of them for teaching purposes.

Supporting the Teaching Mission

My group, LTS, was consolidated into the Digital Media Group (DMG) over the past year. This group includes the University of Canterbury's in-plant, Canterbury Education Printing Services (CEPS), and the Electronic Media Learning Team (ELM). Together our mission is to inform, enrich and support the university's learning and teaching practice through personalized learning across a range of multi-media technologies. That's a mouthful of words that really says we provide teaching tools tailored to increase faculty effectiveness for teaching students.

Our team works to provide faculty the tools necessary to create a more holistic learning experience for the students—which is essentially the mission of every higher-ed in-plant. This involves deploying emerging digital technologies along with the more traditional ones. As part of the Digital Media Group we are capable of pooling together our ideas and resources to create an even better, richer learning experience for our students.

Complementary Services for Blended Learning

There are a number of media types that I believe will be of value to increase our communication effectiveness and reach the student of today and tomorrow. There is print, CD/DVD, video recording, broadcasting, the Internet and mobile technology. Incorporating these will improve effective communication, engage recipients and potentially reach a wider audience. By finding ways to blend these technologies we can deliver a more effective and powerful message to the desired audience.

As printers, our value is in getting the word out, but the outreach is limited. By incorporating other aspects of digital media, we can help make the faculty and lecturers more effective.

We all consume media—typically reading for education and video for pleasure. Paper allows you to scan over a document and quickly filter the content you want. Watching a video does not allow the same scanning flexibility, as you almost have to watch the entire video clip to determine its content value.

But video allows for less misinterpretation of messaging, as you can read body language and see verbal cues. Print can easily be miscommunicated, as the written word is subject to personal interpretation.

Video is not as portable as print and is device dependent. But with video it is also much easier and quicker to demonstrate "how" something is done, while "explaining" in print is much less effective. I believe it's one of video's real strengths, but they both have their strengths and liabilities.

Leveraging video clips to supplement a PowerPoint presentation coupled with printed course material provides students with a well balanced media approach to maximize learning. I've heard quoted that the amount of data consumed each month by online video will more than quadruple between 2011 and 2016. That growth is huge, and with it will be expectations of video communication by our customers.

So having printed course materials, the Web-based electronic PowerPoint presentation, and access to video-recorded lectures provides a multimedia approach to learning. By providing this complement of services, the DMG in-plant can differentiate itself from the competition. Video is a very powerful complementary technology to paper and it improves retention. It's the "read a book, watch a movie" concept, allowing choices for education and learning.

The improved technologies provide the teaching staff with a greater variety of ways to deliver their material. Some of them prefer the tried-and-true, and others are adapting really well to the new options. It really depends on their teaching style. If an instructor is technology savvy, he or she is going to be able to roll out a much more powerful lecture presentation.

Video Capture

The Digital Media Group recently introduced the new Echo 360 automated lecture capture system to 20 teaching venues across campus. I see this as a development that indicates one of the directions in which technology-enabled learning will go in the coming years. We no longer need to have a person operating a camera. The classroom of tomorrow will hold increasingly more technologies that we don't actually have to be in the room to support; we'll be able to troubleshoot and control the audio and video for all the teaching spaces from a central location point. I see that technology shifting and giving us extra flexibility.

Feedback from staff and students has so far been very positive. A couple of students I've talked to said it's not a substitute for going to class, but looking at the video lecture is a refresher before exams. They're able to go back and listen to the key points; it's kind of hard to capture all that in notes, so they're able to review it before exams, and that's been very helpful.

Video Conferencing

Video conferencing provides our school with the technology to reduce the cost of travel. We use tools such as Skype, Adobe Connect and H.323 to connect with others around the world. This was the technology I used in my job interview while I lived in Olympia, Wash. There was an interview panel at the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch, and I was on the other end with my computer and Skype. It was very effective as we interviewed back and forth—and it saved about $2,000 for a round trip flight.

Video conferencing can be used to reach out to students at other universities for dual courses or even to independent students at other locations. I attended a course on the "Impact of Volcanos on Waterways" in which the lecturer spoke to the University of Canterbury class while students at Lincoln University, 12 miles away, watched, interacted and asked questions using a 70˝ video screen. The course was also automatically recorded for future review. This is very powerful technology, and I believe integrating print with other media options is the way of the future in-plant.

Web Portal as Distribution Point

The glue that brings together the multi-media technologies is the Web portal. The course readers, lecture materials, video clips, PowerPoint lectures and recorded lectures are all available online. Students have access through a technology tool called Moodle (similar to Blackboard), which is successfully used campus wide. The availability of the online tools are instrumental in creating the best teaching and learning environment possible, potentially bringing output such as print, video and other media together as a single communication package.

Though I have immersed myself in my new role here, I have also found time to get out and explore this beautiful country. Since arriving a few months ago, I have really enjoyed getting out into the Southern Alps and mountain passes to do some tramping (hiking). I have several hut-to-hut tramps lined up, as well as an extensive rail-to-trail bike adventure booked.

I was so shocked to see how extensive the 2011 and 2012 earthquake damage in Christchurch was, but each day the city is recovering and rebuilding itself. It will become one of the most modern cities in the world. I have found New Zealanders to be extremely friendly and welcoming, which has made my adventure here a highlight in my life.

In keeping with my focus here on video technology, I invite any of you interested in hearing more about our program to contact me on Skype at JeanLucD5. Just keep in mind the substantial day and time difference.