Dr. Semrau will give us an introduction to the basics of streaming video and audio on the web, and some examples created with RealProducer. Dr. Semrau has been working in educational technology since starting her doctoral program at Ohio State University in 1980. After finishing her PhD in 1987, she started teaching at CSULA in 1988 in the Instructional Technology (IT) master's degree program. IT, which means using technology for educational applications, is a fast growing field. At Cal State LA, she teaches courses in multimedia design and production, software authoring tools in education, computer-assisted instruction, classroom applications of microcomputers, and introduction to instructional technology. She started teaching on the web in 1993 using Mosaic (before Netscape) to code web pages, and has been teaching some classes 100% on the web since 1997. One unique capability of the web is that it lets people from around the world work together. In the fall of 1999, she taught a 100% online web course to students in Berlin, Germany. Her research expertise is in the design, development, production, evaluation, and implementation of advanced technologies such as multimedia websites. She is the principal author of an Allyn & Bacon textbook, "Using Interactive Video in Education" (1994). Currently, Dr. Semrau is the director and principal investigator for a major federal contract funded by the National Security Agency (NSA). To date, seven students have been trained and hired for this project focusing on courseware research and evaluation. They have created a website for the project and are presently converting a traditional platform-based course to a web-based course - complete with streaming video. Have you heard of streaming video as in RealVideo? 

Professor Semrau became involved with SIGGRAPH, special effects and animation, which led her to multi-media.  There is a Masters program in Multi-Media at CSULA, but not an undergraduate degree.  Currently she is working on a program for NSA to provide unclassified courses in a Web-based course using streaming video.  Streaming media are digital video and audio that are compressed and streamed out in small data packets flowing like a river into the computer.  Individuals can download Real Player Plus software and make their own streaming video.  Video can be digitized using a capturing card or a digital camera recorder that supplies the digital output directly.  Then the user can edit the video and use Real Producer software to produce streaming video output.

This process was demonstrated by Professor Semrau using a phone line connection to the CSULA website.  The demonstration was impressive even over the relatively slow interface.  She discussed the NSA project, which was to explain an Equal Opportunity Employment program to NSA employees.  Initially a teacher was videotaped lecturing to a class.  The video was edited to get rid of material judged to be irrelevant to the course.  Some of this information was interesting in itself, and possibly useful in teacher interaction with a live class but was not felt to be appropriate for the on-line course.  The editing also allowed the addition of displays that were more readable and interesting than the illustrations used by the instructor.  The instructor may of necessity be using chalk on a blackboard, but there is no reason for that limitation in the web course.  The editing and integration were accomplished by students who are learning how to do streaming video.

Professor Semrau showed a number of quite spectacular demonstration videos that featured clever animation.  CSULA is delivering some courses entirely on-line.  However, there are some things that can't be done well on-line and she feels it is important to deal with students face-to-face and have critical dialogues with groups of students.  Most students do not want to take courses on line.  Some of the better students, who start out well versed in computer techniques, are particularly interested in the on-line courses and are motivated to use them successfully.

Professor Semrau answered a number of questions from the audience.  A question was asked about an organization called the Open University that provides remote courses.  She answered that they basically use videotape technology and they had been working with CSULA, which was providing help with web technology.  In answer to a question about interactivity with the students, she said they are not doing this under the current NSA contract.  In other areas they have used "chat rooms" with students for interactivity.  One problem is that students frequently are taking remote courses because they cannot be available at particular times so "chat rooms" requiring their presence at particular times are not always effective for them.  She said that starting out an on-line course required an extremely high effort with a number of 100-hour weeks.  Fortunately the workload became less after things were set up.

There were a number of people with educational backgrounds in the audience, and there were quite a number of questions about various procedures.  It was a very interesting meeting, well presented by Professor Semrau.  For more information go to the CSULA ATS Real Media Development Site: Teaching with RealMedia
Go to http://www.calstatela.edu/ats/real/

This was the ninth meeting of the LA Chapter year and was attended by about 30 persons.  It was one of our better attended meetings of the year.

Mike Walsh, LA ACM Secretary