UWA Albany Centre

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Academic Developers Conference 2001
High Tech, High TouchEducation at a distance
Alan Dodds, The University of Western
Australia Albany Centre
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Overview

• The UWA Albany Centre
• The evolution of iLectures
• What the students see

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The UWA Albany Centre

• Albany is situated 400km south west of Perth on
  the south coast of WA
• UWA responded to a request from the City of
  Albany and the local community for tertiary level
  courses
• Opened for semester 1 1999
• 4 units offered

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Programmes available in Albany

• Undergraduate (43 students in 2001)
• Mainly 1st-year units (19 offered in 2001) which
  can be put towards over 20 degrees in 6 faculties
• A few 2nd-year Arts units where there is
  sufficient demand
• At this point tudents complete their degrees in
  Perth
• Postgraduate (23 students in 2001)
• Masters in education management, regional
  development and natural resource management

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The Teaching and Learning Environment in Albany

• Combines technology (high tech) with
  face-to-face (high touch)
• High tech includes
• On-line managed learning environments (the Forum,
  Web CT)
• Video conferencing
• High touch includes
• Tutorials labs lead by local tutors
• Visits by lecturers from Perth

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The Teaching and Learning Environment in Albany -
contd

• Traditional contact time
• Students use the Forum to listen to lectures over
  the web - at the Centre or at home
• Students attend tutorials and labs as they would
  in Perth
• Other forms of contact
• Forum and Web CT provide access to course
  materials, bulletin boards, notice boards
• Tutors are available for out-of-class
  consultation lecturers once a semester

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UWA Albany Centre
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Technology and the UWA Albany Centre

• 2 computer labs with 18 iMacs increasing to 30 in
  the new building for 2002
• 3 airport enabled iBooks
• Main Server used as
• Fileserver for students and staff data files
• Webserver for the UWA Albany Centre web site
• Backup for students and staff files
• Server currently ASIP moving to OS X for 2002
• OS X Quicktime streaming server for the lectures
• Dial in facility with 6 modems

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Technology and the UWA Albany Centre

• 100BaseT ethernet internal network
• Wireless network for the portables
• ISDN link to Perth 64k to 256k on demand
• Video Conferencing Unit
• uses 128k ISDN link

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Lectures and the Albany Centre

• Initially based on Video Conferencing
• Lectures repeated for VC
• Some lectures already on web from the Faculty of
  Arts Multimedia Centre (MMC)
• These were soon used in Albany
• Now all units use lecture recordings
• VC used more for Q A

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Lectures and the Albany Centre

• In the first year lectures were recorded manually
  to cassettes
• Taken to the MMC for digitisation
• Problems
• Buttons not pressed
• Tapes not delivered
• Tapes put through the wash

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Lectures and the Albany Centre

• Year 2 - Lecture theatres upgraded to allow
  direct digitisation
• Lecture recordings automated

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Automated Lecture Recording
Lecturer goes to the lecture theatre and turns on
the appropriate microphone
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Automated Lecture Recording
Computer in lecture theatre with lecture schedule
The lecture is recorded onto the computer in the
lecture theatre
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Automated Lecture Recording
Transferred via Network
Computer in lecture theatre with lecture schedule
Compressor 1 of 4
After the lecture, the recording is transferred
via the network to the first free compressor
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Automated Lecture Recording
Quicktime Streaming Server Perth
Compressor
Quicktime Streaming Server Albany
RealAudio Streaming Server Perth
The recording is compressed ready for streaming
and transferred to the streaming servers
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Automated Lecture Recording
Compressor
Forum Website
The Forum Website is updated so that students can
access the lecture and associated lecture slides
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Automated Lecture Recording
FTP Server
A.N.Other server
The raw lecture recording is made available for
collection by other campus units (WebCT)
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Automated Lecture Recording

• Lectures available in Albany next morning
• Manual version available for cassette
  recordings
• Problems with automation
• Automated process fails
• Lecturer uses wrong microphone
• Lecture schedule incorrectly set up
• Future development of an early warning system
  essential to Albany -- this directly benefits the
  Crawley campus

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Automated Lecture Recording

• What happens when a lecturer want to write
  something?
• --- Use the Visualiser and get talking hands
• Top lit data projector with a built in camcorder
• Video stream recorded with audio stream

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Automated Lecture Recording
The Visualiser
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Automated Lecture Recording

• What does the student see?

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Flexible delivery?

• Available through the Albany Centre labs
• Dial in service - access via 28k modem
• Used increasingly by students in Perth
• Student feedback (and results) very favourable

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The Future

• HECS places for 2002
• Extension of courses to full degrees over the
  next few years
• More lecture theatres are being upgraded for
  automated lecture recording (8 to 14 for semester
  2, 2001)

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Those Stats
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Money

• Briefing paper says
• US25,000 per instructional hour
• US650,000 per semester unit (26hrs)
• Units from MMC last semester 115
• 115 x US650,000
• US74,750,000

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iLecturesAutomated lecture recording

• iLecture system in process of commercialisation
• UWA and Apple Computer provided funding for this
  project
• Interested? Contact Mike Neville or Mike Fardon
  at the Arts Multimedia Centre
• mneville_at_arts.uwa.edu.au or mfardon_at_arts.uwa.edu.a
  u

QA