The Steeple Project - University of...

The Steeple Project JISC Final Report on Streamlining Enterprise Level Podcasting for UK HE Community Peter Robinson (University of Oxford) Carl Marshall (University of Oxford) Björn Haßler (University of Cambridge) Ben Hawkridge (Open University) Published: April 2010

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements............................................................................................................................ 2

Executive Summary ............................................................................................................................ 3

Introduction.......................................................................................................................................... 4 Background........................................................................................................................................... 4 Academic Podcasting Case Studies ................................................................................................. 5

Aims and Objectives .......................................................................................................................... 5

Methodology & Implementation ....................................................................................................... 6

Outcomes and Outputs ...................................................................................................................... 8 Institutional Change and Project Management .............................................................................. 8 Institutional Podcasting Processes ...................................................................................................... 8 Infrastructure and Scaling.................................................................................................................... 9 Cataloging and Distribution Portals.................................................................................................. 11 Community Support ........................................................................................................................... 12

Conclusions ....................................................................................................................................... 13

Implications & Recommendations .................................................................................................. 14 Recommendations for technical services ....................................................................................... 14 Recommendations for partners ........................................................................................................ 14 Recommendations for JISC............................................................................................................... 15 The Future ............................................................................................................................................ 15 Open Content..................................................................................................................................... 16

References ......................................................................................................................................... 17

Appendix A: Dissemination and Events Listing............................................................................... 18 Publicity................................................................................................................................................ 18 Presentations and Meetings .............................................................................................................. 18

2 [THE STEEPLE PROJECT]

Acknowledgements The Steeple project was a collaboration between the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and the Open University. Our project and its success is also due in part to the enthusiastic support and involvement of the community of podcasters from other institutions that formed around this work. Steeple was funded by the JISC Institutional Innovation (Phase 2) programme. Our thanks go to the programme manager Lawrie Phipps, our primary support contact Jenny Mackness, and the rest of the JISC SSBR team led by George Roberts. We would especially like to highlight and thank the following: Our host departments

• Oxford University Computing Services, University of Oxford • Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies, University of Cambridge • Knowledge Media Institute, Open University

Our Project champions

• Melissa Highton - Oxford • John Norman - Cambridge • Peter Scott - Open

Technical consultants and friends of the project include: Barry Cornelius, Aaron Zeckoski, Jason Norton, Scott Wilson, Sally Hanford, Adrian Birch, Laura James, Laurian Gridinoc, Bernadette Attwell, Nick Watson, John Sinton, Catherine Chambers, Kristoff van Leeuwen, Stewart Nixon, Jenny Barden, Jane Roberts, Angela Davies, Steve Pierce, David Shakespeare, Carolyne Culver, Stuart Lee, Stuart Brown, Leslaw Zieleznik, Andrew Middleton, Graham McElearney, Roger Greenhalgh, Tobias Wunden and Olaf Schulte. The Steeple Community of over 27 institutions and 50 people on the Steeple email list.

[THE STEEPLE PROJECT] 3

Executive Summary The Steeple project was an institutional exemplar project across three UK institutions: the University of Cambridge, the Open University, and the University of Oxford (lead institution). The project researched and documented institutional podcasting activities. It was prompted by the recent innovative work undertaken within these universities in preparation for creation and dissemination of audio/video recordings in iTunes U. Steeple also attracted a community of practice around the development of scalable, enterprise-level solutions suitable for educational audio/video processing and delivery at scale. The project aimed to consolidate and share technical practices on the scaling of services, encoding audio-visual material, and delivering to new third-party services. The project met these aims through a community approach of sharing best practices and promoting open standards. One early outcome of this approach was a demonstrator portal acting as a video sharing service across four UK universities. The project's innovative work led to many contacts with other institutions who were looking for advice on technical and policy issues, particularly on project management and institutional change management. This early interest led to the use of an open community wiki to document outputs. To support this growing community the project organised a large podcasting conference of over 120 delegates in April 2009 and a series of technical workshops, consultancies, online meetings and wiki sprints through an active mail list. The project investigated institutional infrastructure needed to support university wide educational podcasting, addressing the issues of scaling from occasional high-profile content generation, through to high-volume institution-wide lecture capture, concluding that there is no one-stop single solution to all issues. Project work was done on processes that allow an institution to syndicate to multiple online audiences and hence benefit from economies of scale. The project also collaborated on video web portal demonstrators for Oxford and Cambridge and investigated syndication to mobile devices and subject portals. The highlights of the project included:

• Launch of Oxford and Cambridge in iTunes U and the continued success of the Open University in iTunes U.

• Dissemination to over 1,000 people at more than 21 events through the life of the project.

• A unique video sharing portal demonstrator spanning 4 UK Universities allowing 7,000 talks to be searched and viewed.

• A Toolkit to help manage institutional change in audio-video activities for public dissemination.

• A community of 20+ Universities interested in the project aims. • Over 300 wiki pages and 4 expansive handbooks on technology, processes and

policy. • Over 30 training podcasts by HE podcasting experts. • Work with the wider international community and with Apple. • Support for a benefits realisation project to further enhance the community.


Introduction Over the course of 18 months, the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and the Open University worked together to document and record as much of their expertise as possible related to setting up and managing of institutional multimedia (podcasting) services. This report gives a brief overview of the project's work - its lessons and outputs - introducing our key recommendations for this topic at the end. This is not a comprehensive document as much as a summary of the project website, our community wiki, the various audio and video recordings, downloadable handbooks, software products and more, generated through the Steeple Project.

Background In 2008 a small number of UK universities were offered the opportunity of being the first non-US institutions to be invited to participate in the Apple iTunes U1 online media portal. This new arena offered a new opportunity for innovative practices in making public lectures and talks available but also a challenge in instigating new institutional workflow policies for content creation and delivery. Oxford, Cambridge and the Open University decided to participate in this new service with each having around 200 talks and lectures initially. This material is available for free to a global audience for use in personal learning and all teaching media is stored by the local institution but surfaced through RSS via the iTunes U portal. Three different factors have created a rise in demand for online educational media and hence for an increase in institutional audio-video activities. The first driver is the rise of consumer video capture devices that allow individual academics and students to record material and the related rise of YouTube and similar video hosting services that simplify encoding and hosting of online media. The second factor is the increased availability of portable media players such as iPods that can be synchronised with media hosting services. The third factor is the rise of walled garden educational video sharing services, such as the successful UK launch of Apple iTunes U in 2008 and the subsequent launch of YouTube Edu in 2009. These new distribution channels provide a unique opportunity for widening global access to high-quality educational resources. Whilst the technical challenges associated with handling the large volume of video and audio content being produced by academic colleagues was seen as the major concern, we quickly discovered that the policies needed to manage such materials would also benefit our peers. This shared experience, together with a need for consolidation in legal and policy decisions was the starting point for the Steeple project.

1 At the start of the project the Open University had just launched in iTunes U and Oxford and Cambridge both were at the final stages of launching their institutional presence.

Steeple took the stance that this

new area of media work was

difficult for one institution alone to

master and so would try to nurture

a viable community around

scalable, enterprise-level

audio/video activities.


Academic Podcasting Case Studies

Aims and Objectives The vision for the Steeple project was to

• Investigate, develop and document sustainable cost-effective institutional infrastructure to support university wide educational podcasting.

• Instigate a community of practice around scalable, enterprise-level educational audio-video creation.


The projects main concerns were addressed by:

• Supporting and documenting the adoption of best practice for sustainability and longevity of material.

• Making it easier to deliver media into public channels via processes related to metadata standards and promoting the use of widespread encoding formats.

• Sharing of experiences that have allowed others to save unnecessary expenses and reduce their learning curve.

Steeple worked to document the following areas throughout the life of the project:

• Institutional change management, user requirements, use cases and legal processes • Audio/video policies and content workflows for public dissemination of teaching

material • Audio/video transcoding technologies and service management • Training and support needs and sample materials

Methodology & Implementation Over the course of the project we worked together to document and record as much of our expertise as possible related to setting up and managing of institutional multimedia (podcasting) services. Through this collaborative approach and through contact with the various national networks of which we are part, the project attracted and grew an active community of peers within other UK HEI who are keen to learn and share their own experiences with the widest audience possible. Indeed, this community has become the leading UK participant in both the European media community (the Terana organised TaskForce-Media group) and the international educational media community, OpenCast. For example, the work started as part of the Steeple project, and continuing to this day via our community Wiki, on Metadata standards for sharing and aggregation of content, has become the focus and lead for international cooperation and standardisation. The key areas of project work were:

• Communication and outreach by all partners • Policy and Institutional Change led by the Open University • Content processing and video encoding services led by Oxford • Audio video portals and standardising metadata led by Cambridge • Alignment with larger international projects such as OpenCast Matterhorn

The planned work was broken down into discrete areas, and then distributed amongst the contributing partners based upon their own specific interests and resourcing. Open University led on the policies and process work, building on their long standing background as a high production value, high quality, method driven institution, though they also worked to compare and contrast our different approaches to the same problems. Cambridge took the lead on portal developments, having an institutional desire for a solution to an existing problem. Oxford led on the infrastructure development having an interest in supporting a fledgling podcasting service. Whilst all areas were of mutual interest and all partners had direct experience, this division of labour worked well as a way of spreading control and resourcing.


The proposed work packages were reviewed in the light of early feedback from community. Universities who are in the process of signing up to Apple's iTunes U portal have been keen to learn from our successes, and this increased the amount of individual dissemination time needed and also prioritised and expanded the management oriented policies and processes work

• We scaled up the work done on metadata, aggregation of content and promoting the use of open standards, because this has allowed each institution to work towards an exciting common goal - one that supports philanthropic aims of global dissemination, co-operation and inclusive learning

• Doubling of work on portals, with both solutions reinforcing our position for the separation of data from presentation, and providing viable options for the different technical resourcing setups in UK HEIs

• We had to scale down the work on podcast management systems, as we would be unable to make a notable improvement to the overall situation given available time and resources, and because this area is receiving a lot of attention from the various commercial (Echo360, VBrick, Mediasite, Apple Podcast Producer, etc) and open-source solutions (OpenCast Matterhorn, Mediamosa, Pumukit, Kaltura, and more) that are beginning to emerge.

• Server infrastructure, design and deployment, was reshaped and delayed to accommodate the significant investment of institutional money into the Oxford Podcasting Service. Through this funding we benefited from having truly enterprise level hardware and a real-world deployment, opposed to the planned small scale demonstration setup. There was also extra training and external consulting needed to enable key technologies such as the storage network and the authentication systems integration. The delays unfortunately reduced the amount of development time available for back-end services.

The collaborative approach taken led to these observations:

• Project management across three institutions can be challenging but equally rewarding when it can be made to work. The project benefited from weekly Skype project meetings and a shared set of interests amongst colleagues. Good face-to-face communication and listening to other institutions helped guide the outputs.

• A collaborative Wiki was very successful acting as a shared space (with CC license), which served as a community focal point for early drafts of all work.

• Complicated technical work was found to be best communicated through blog posts and mailing list.

• Use of audio/video/screencapture to capture and communicate processes and ideas was well received.

• Frequent expert-led workshops with other institutions solved many technical issues. • An assembly at the mid-point of the project launched a new push for standards in

cataloguing.

We set out with a specific goal

of not reinventing the wheel,

nor of creating a monolithic

technical solution that was only

supported through our work –

Peter Robinson, PI Steeple


• Iterative example-led development, for instance the cross-institutional aggregation

portal, helped to focus interest and discussion over collaboration and sharing. • Needs-based setting of direction: The partners were already in the iTunes U process,

and needed to come up with new solutions to the scaling problems they were facing.

Outcomes and Outputs In this section we give a sample of the key outcomes with related outputs listed below each area. All of our outcomes and outputs can be found via our project website (http://steeple.oucs.ox.ac.uk/) and via the associated wiki and blog, in a range of formats including videos, podcasts, presentations, handbooks and more.

Institutional Change and Project Management Podcasting processes cut across many departmental and administrative boundaries within an institution, and our work has shown that success can only be found through internal collaboration. An iTunes U launch is a good example of a large cross-institutional ITC project that may act as a catalyst to promote innovation and benefit teaching and learning and has the best chance of succeeding when championed by senior executives and linked to a communication strategy. Key Steeple outputs that support institutional change include:

• A guide to managing institutional media services including all relevant project outputs - http://www.steeple.org.uk/wiki/Category:Institutional_change

o Video documentaries including input from senior management at Oxford University and The Open University

o Conference videos and presentations from over 20 institutions world-wide discussing institutional media services

o Audio interviews with key stakeholders, academics and managers from Cambridge, Oxford, The Open University, UCL and Coventry

• A resource pack of all documents relating to launching and managing the iTunes U service - http://steeple.org.uk/wiki/ITunesU

o Launching iTunes U Project Kit o Institutional checklist and FAQ o Interviews with Copyright experts and Public Relations professionals.

Institutional Podcasting Processes The Steeple project has created clear guidance on policy and processes for media service work based on the experience of the three partner institutions. The outputs are presented as reports, videos and interviews and explain through example the need for legal processes, quality assurance policies, copyright clearing and content creation workflows. These guides can be used in training and can also be used to estimate costs for scaling up activities for new media services. The guides also provide input into strategies for institutions wishing to structure their communication and publication processes. Key Steeple institutional policy and processes outputs include:

• A wiki page listing all relevant project outputs - http://www.steeple.org.uk/wiki/Category:Policies_and_Processes_Report

• Steeple Policies and Processes Handbook


• Media Accessibility Requirements report • A series of audio and video interviews with AV managers and copyright experts -

http://steeple.oucs.ox.ac.uk/resources/media/ • Training material in the Introduction to Podcasting Booklet • Launching an institution in iTunes U - http://steeple.org.uk/wiki/iTunesU

Figure 1: Institutional Podcasting Ecosystem

Infrastructure and Scaling Podcasting processes cut across boundaries and rely on a broad spectrum of technical systems and resources - video content production is computationally demanding, generates large amounts of data for storage, has value that needs to be addressed by archiving and backup solutions not typically accustomed to large binary formats. Designing content generation and distribution processes that are easy to use by academics with minimal training is nontrivial and can often only be achieved by supporting specific paths that will provide the most benefit to your university. Figure 2 outlines Oxford's planned technical solution to providing a podcasting service that supports institutional use, however, whilst this is derived from demonstration work and lessons learnt from Steeple activities, this is still being implemented.

Capture Process Publish View

Content Creators

Dept X • Content creators & IT Support

Dept Y • Content creators & IT Support

Process

A/V Capture

Editing

File Upload • Private URL for Contributors Approval

Catalogue Engine Create metadata • Create RSS • Add items • Catalogue items • Submit for approval

Podchecker • Review/Approve/Legal Docs

Jorum Open

Institutional Web Portal

iTunesU

Mobile Web Portal

VLE

Quality Control

Central Podcasting Service

* Training and support given throughout

Approval

Key

Content creators

- Can create content - Can create/ submit metadata

- Can submit for approval to Central Podcasting Service

There is no one existing solution

that allows you to economically

support all forms of content

creation to all possible outlets –

Carl Marshall, Steeple PM (Oxford)


Figure 2: Oxford Service Elements Interaction Diagram

Technical challenges for interoperability at an enterprise level are difficult and require highly specialised skills usually quite different from audio/visual content creation and are exceptionally rare to find in one individual and so teamwork is needed from a range of people including programmers, system administrators and audio/video experts. The hardest challenge is often interoperability between systems such as encoding servers, existing directory services and authentications systems, VLEs and DAMS. These integration activities are difficult because of the deep specialist skills needed and therefore specialist training opportunities are needed in the sector. Managing high volume activities is still difficult but there are now more enterprise level technical solutions available that help in the automation of encoding material. Costs for such infrastructure are still high, but there are workaround options to suit budgets (e.g. outsourcing) with trade offs against performance (e.g. distributed storage) and manual intervention, that can be considered. Archiving and Backup policies are important but often difficult to cost and plan for within a busy service environment. The value of recreating content is often underestimated and in the haste to deliver content on time it is easy to forget to document fully the ownership and copyright trail of assets, and to not explicitly document collaborative agreements. A clear policy for the safe storage of all the assets used in your podcast production process is vital. Key Steeple institutional infrastructure outputs include:

• A wiki page listing through all relevant project outputs - http://www.steeple.org.uk/wiki/Category:Podservice

• Setting up a podcasting technical service report • Server setup blogs and screencasts


• Review of existing/available encoding systems • Video giving an overview of Technical considerations for enterprise level podcasting

Cataloging and Distribution Portals It is common for a University to deliver content into multiple web portals and third-party systems and economies of scale can be found by keeping content and related metadata in open standards compliant formats. Work on defining and expanding some of these standards has been done through Steeple, but it is also of interest to a much wider community than Podcasting or UK HE, and our work has learnt from the international arena and is being incorporated back into those efforts. Interoperability and lightweight aggregation of audio and video in a demonstration portal was possible. Content across Steeple institutions could be searched and viewed in this way through adherence to a standards based approach to metadata and agreement between the Universities to expose their content through a web service. It has shown that the ability to harmonise on standards for sharing audio/visual metadata and for encoding lead to an outcome greater than the sum of the parts. To be able to search across all institutions and then present a link to play the material directly is a great step forwards to a shared information architecture. It also clearly shows the potential for shared services in areas that might be impossible for one institution to tackle alone, such as speech to text transcriptions, translations, auto-categorisation, linking of material and themes, etc. The demonstrator also shows the potential for community middleware services such as tagging, ratings, multi-codec encoding services, OCR across video slides, etc.

Figure 3: The Ensemble Aggregation Concept

Steeple strongly recommends

keeping metadata and content

independent of a portal or display

system, thus ensuring wider

integration options and ability to

change systems more readily.


This visualisation work and the attention it has received has clearly demonstrated the benefits of partnerships based on shared interests and standards. Our work in this area has led to our Ensemble package of code demonstrators and working processes. The next stage of work would be to advance from the production of lightweight, simple showcase, web demonstrators, to a consolidated national service. This service would allow multiple institutions to join their open content and publicly available podcast feeds into a larger aggregated dataset, surfacing often hidden high value institutional assets for the subject communities and the wider public good. This step seems to be more technically attainable now, but relies on a shared vision from stakeholders. Key Steeple institutional cataloguing and distribution outputs include:

• A wiki page listing through all relevant project outputs - http://www.steeple.org.uk/wiki/Category:Portal

o Portal software code and examples o Design criteria for portal o Ensemble code, demonstrators and documentation o Metadata standards derived o Review of alternative portal systems o Reshaping of Oxford engagement with iTunes U

• An audio video podcasting demonstrator portal featuring 7,000+ items from 4 HEs - http://podcast.steeple.org.uk/

• Cataloguing, Metadata and Portals Wiki Handbook

Community Support The key to Steeple's success was from the outset building an effective community of practice of technically minded individuals with input from strategic communications partners. Institutional change is daunting and a Steeple talk on this challenge was entitled "Going Up The Down Escalator". Project consultation has shown that all HEIs find scaling up for third-party portals challenging and are helped by support from the Steeple community, a friendly group of people who have been or are going through the same experiences. Key community support activities include:

• Online community wiki • Benefits realisation Community of 20+ institutions sharing outputs at events, workshops

and conferences • A wiki page listing through all relevant community activities -

http://www.steeple.org.uk/wiki/Category:BR • Training material such as guides to equipment, podcasting tutorials and course notes,

leaflets and marketing materials • Steeple JISCmail list with members from across the UK • Resources, presentations and recordings from all workshop and conference activities


Conclusions There was clear evidence prior to this project that a manual podcasting process does not scale to an institutional level. This has been confirmed in this project and through experience. We were able to demonstrate that it is possible to arrive at an institutional podcasting process, which is cost effective. One such service example is the devolved model of podcasting operating at Oxford and highlighted in the Outputs section. Coordination within the institution is required between a range of services, including technical services, creative services, institutions responsible for communications, and academics. In the deployment of institutional podcasting, there needs to be a clear path, developed in collaboration with those individuals who are keen to trial new technologies. A "wait and see" approach can easily lead to an unmanageable backlog of work. The use of the technology plays a key part in institutional podcasting. However, depending on the technologies chosen, these can both enable and stifle. It is important to draw on experiences of others, and to apply those experiences intelligently within one's own institution. At present, there is no single technical solution that can solve "institutional podcasting" off the shelf, but there are strong candidates that can solve part of the workflow, including open source technologies (such as Opencast Matterhorn) and commercial technologies (such as Apple Podcast Producer). Technical challenges for interoperability at an enterprise level are difficult and require highly specialised skills usually quite different from audio-visual content creation. Building an effective community of practice of technically minded individuals with input from strategic communications partners will help meet the challenge that high quality, high volume audio/video activities creates in the diverse educational arena. The main commercial-backed distribution channels for free educational content are iTunes U and YouTube Edu. For maximum exposure, it is important to be present in those. However, distribution through institutional channels, as well as HE-based channels is equally important, and by using open standards and keeping content and metadata separate from the distribution portals, entry into these and more is easily achievable. The portal and metadata work has shown that there are many opportunities for added value services to institutional podcasting activities if the data is exposed in an open manner. Through standardised portals, discovery and promotion of media is optimised. We conclude that creating efficient, well working media portals that provide a good user experience is very difficult to achieve for any one institution. Through a collaborative effort, much better results can be achieved.


Implications & Recommendations

Recommendations for technical services Avoid Starting From Scratch: As the popularity of podcasting and multimedia services continues to increase, yet time and money needs to be saved, then a recommendation must be to not to try and develop enterprise solutions from the ground-up but to look for more mature commercial or open source solutions with good community support. We recommend that you:

• Do not reinvent the wheel. Use Podcast Producer or Opencast’s Matterhorn to do your podcasting technical work. Build on the foundations offered by others. Offer your work to help your peers.

Keep Content Independent of Implementation: As more institutions deploy systems that make the generation and distribution of audio visual material much easier, the quantity of content is going to grow dramatically. The value and cost of these outputs needs to be assessed by each institution, and due regard given to the longevity and safekeeping of that content. This means reassessing the cost of archiving solutions in the context of the value of the content they now need to contain, about having good processes for keeping high-quality original material so that it can be updated for newer technologies and changes in distribution platforms, format and policies. Future proofing can be realised by simple policies such as not heavily watermarking with your current institutional brand on any original archive material and resisting channel specific embedded titling. We recommend that:

• Further work be funded to investigate policies and technologies for archiving content, suitable for institutional media capture and podcasting services. Much more needs to be done with reference to media and cataloguing and exposure through library systems and repositories.

• Consider services like YouTube EDU, and iTunes U for high profile distribution. • High quality original material should be kept in a suitable (not necessarily open)

format and due time and resources given to the updating of these archives over time. Institutions should avoid being locked into a single format, single vendor-solution, because formats and usage patterns change.

Recommendations for partners Improve Content Sharing: The wealth of material already created needs to be made much more discoverable, let alone the explosion of new material that is coming online. The lightweight technologies used by podcasting are much more readily accessible than any form of theoretical learning object system, so we should be building on this area. The ongoing work to understand the minimal and maximal metadata sets for podcasts needs to continue, and the findings implemented widely. And with this material and standardised approach, sharing and reuse can be encouraged in many ways, such as through a national podcasting web-portal, subject specific collections, community and topic based projects, and more.


We recommend that:

• The Ensemble audio/video search demonstrator needs further funding to develop a mature, production ready code implementation that will be the technical engine to power the reuse ideas mentioned.

• Further work particularly on a UK video sharing service, as illustrated by our Aggregation Portal Demonstrator, be funded.

Recommendations for JISC Provide Nationalised Training and Support: Support, training and a community of practice are essential to the healthy development of these technologies and practices. We have seen a clear demand for human-to-human interactions between those with experience and those tasked with delivering new services. There are also economies of scale to benefit from in terms of aggregated processing and storage solutions, as well as the relatively high entry cost to enterprise level podcasting for smaller institutions, who could benefit from working together on, or paying for, a shared solution. We recommend:

• Establishing a National Service to support multimedia activities both within institutions and on a national scale. Offer consultancy and support on all podcasting aspects.

• There is a role for shared services in the sector due to the complexities of cataloguing, encoding and hosting large volumes of audio-visual data, perhaps as part of the National Service.

Investigate Podcast Creation: This project was founded on the principle that the technical process would start with an original high-quality file containing the material to distribute. This is part of the overall podcasting process, but it is not the beginning, and in the main, we have steered away from issues related to capturing and recording of content. However, this is a huge topic in its own right and needs thorough investigation, both from a process standpoint (which the JISC ELTAC project has touched upon) and a technical approach (touched upon with our pilot capture work). We believe that much more needs to be done to help academic colleagues to use these technologies more easily. We recommend:

• A broader comparative study of the different approaches and styles available to create content, and of the different technical environments and solutions that can be leveraged. In particular it would be helpful to tally technical solutions against the various use-cases they can support, so as to better educate institutions about what systems to buy and install for maximal effect.

The Future There are many topics on the fringe of the project that will become increasingly important in the future, there are many areas that as a community we are sure will need further investigation and technical services made available to be supported nationally. Audio-visual educational activities will only increase in the next five years and this area will be one of the

The best way to predict the

future is to invent it - Alan Kay


faster growth areas in scholarly communication and online training. Key issues include:

• A growth in industrialised lecture capture across UK HE • Global reach - the increased presence by UK HE in public video sharing sites such as

YouTube Edu and iTunes U • A growth in the internal demand for recording activities driven by the public channels • Encoding services that add value though automatic cataloguing and transcription • A recognition of the need for inexpensive archiving and storage solutions which

protect the content for the long-term What's next?

• Catering for mobile audiences and low bandwidth audiences • Catering for large surges in demand for reuse • Increased use of mixed media presentations and more complicated learning objects • Increased use of Video/Audio feedback systems in Teaching and Learning and

further integration into learning spaces such as the VLE • A revival in the need for institutional Film/TV studio setups • Sophisticated online editing options being built-in to delivery platforms and hence

reducing editing costs

Open Content Potential sets of reusable high-value audio and video content are becoming available for reuse under open licences such as Creative Commons. The Steeple project portal demonstrator has shown it is possible to share, aggregate and expose content through metadata standardisation across four HEs. There will be new opportunities for subject communities to use this open content through subject specific micro-sites. What educational organisations are setting the pace of future developments?

• OpenCast Community and the Matterhorn open source lecture capture solution • Terena with their Task Force for Multimedia (TF-Media) • Steeple Community - this may merge with the OpenCast Community after funding is

withdrawn, or be fully self-sustaining and or merge as a technical wing of the UK-SIG Media Enhanced Learning (formerly Podcasting for Pedagogic Purposes)


References The material in this report is based on the knowledge and experience of the Steeple Project team. In the main part, this knowledge has been captured through various outputs which can be found via the project website. Ongoing work and community material can be found in the project wiki. Thoughts, observations and technical notes can be found via the project blog. Website: http://steeple.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ Wiki: http://www.steeple.org.uk/ Blog: http://steeple.posterous.com/ iTunes U http://projects.kmi.open.ac.uk/itunesu/ http://itunes.ox.ac.uk http://itunes.open.ac.uk http://itunes.cam.ac.uk


Appendix A: Dissemination and Events Listing The complete and most up to date listing for dissemination activities can be found online at http://steeple.oucs.ox.ac.uk/events/index.html.

Publicity • The Sunday Times on 11th October 2009 featured a full page colour article on Open

Content and Podcasting including quotes from academics and support staff at Oxford, Cambridge and The Open University. There is also an online version entitled http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article6869552.ece Self-learners' creating university of online'].

• Wired magazine featured Steeple.org.uk podcasting portal in a column on Open Education in the June 2009 edition of Wired magazine, page 23.

• National press and web - Over 70 articles on the iTunes U launch of Oxford,Cambridge and The Open University - http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/podcasts/press/

Presentations and Meetings • Peter Robinson gave a Steeple talk at Learning on Screen the British Universities Film

and Video conference in April 2010. • Peter Robinson gave a talk at the Beyond Borders Conference on Open Education on

20th April 2010. • Carl Marshall gave a talk on Steeple at the UCL Teaching and Learning Network

meeting February 2010. • Open Video in Zurich in Jan - Björn Haßler and Peter Robinson. • Open Educational conference in Nottingham November 2009 - Björn Haßler and

Peter Robinson. • Steeple and ELTAC hosted a joint assembly with various other universities at Oxford on

October 7th 2009. The day included around 30 people from HE discussing and presenting about their interests in the world of online audio and video capture. The day was structured in the form of an unconference with topics chosen from a list of talks on the BR_Assembly page. A significant output of the day was a technical thinktank across the participants looking at opportunities for a uniformed structuring of metadata for podcast delivery.

• Peter Robinson gave a talk entitled 'A Pocket University' at the Future of Technology Conference in London on 2nd October 2009. The talk covered the activity at Oxford, the Steeple project and also gave a preview of the sister strand project EREWHON mobile portal m.ox.ac.uk. Slides with audio for A Pocket University are online at the FOTE web site.

• Peter Robinson gave a talk on iTunes U, Steeple and Open Video Content to the JISC Digital Collections for historians event at Oxford on September 3rd 2009.

• Barry Cornelius from Oxford gave an overview of institutional podcasting and the technical work to get Oxford on iTunes U at the UK HE Web-managers conference in July 2009.

• Peter Robinson gave a talk on Steeple and Open Video Content to the JISC Sound and Video think tank at HEFCE in London on 23rd June 2009.


• Peter Robinson gave a keynote on Institutional Podcasting at the PPP SIG meeting in

Glasgow on May 7th 2009. http://podcastingforpp.pbwiki.com/Glasgow-Caledonian-University

• Peter Robinson gave a keynote on Oxford on iTunes U at Apple HQ on May 11th 2009. • Peter Robinson gave a talk on Steeple, ENSEMBLE and the Steeple podcast portal

work at JISC for CETIS and the JISC OER strand in April 2009 - Tag: UKOER • The Steeple team was at the JISC programme meeting 23rd/24th April 2009 in

Manchester. • Peter Robinson is gave a presentation about Steeple and sharing ideas at the Oxford

Apache BarCamp in Oxford on Sunday 5th April 2009. http://barcamp.org/BarCampApacheOxford

• Steeple Podcasting conference - 'Beyond Walls' in Oxford. April 3rd 2009. Fully sold-out. 120 people gathered at Oxford to discuss enterprise level podcasting. Podcasts, programme and reports are available via the Steeple website.

o http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/events/beyond2009 o Related Digital Literacy conference the previous day, same location

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/events/shock2009 • Steeple Podcasting presentation 'Oxford on iTunes U - 'Unlocking Audio Conference'

at the British Library Sound Archive, London. 16th March 2009. • Steeple Tech Workshop - Practical and pragmatic experiences with podcasting

technologies. March 5th & 6th 2009, OUCS, Oxford. • Apple HQ London - 'Oxford on iTunes U'. January 16th 2009

o Links to the talk http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/podcasts/presentations/2008neweb/

o Further info from Cambridge and Open University related links http://projects.kmi.open.ac.uk/itunesu/ http://www.sciencemedianetwork.org/Steeple

• Björn Haßler spoke at Teletask conference in Berlin 13th/14th Nov 2008. The first part of the talk makes the pitch for Steeple and OpenCast, but then moves on to accessibility issues in video and the digital divide.

• Björn Haßler spoke at JISC IPTV conference 6th Nov 2008, covering Steeple and OpenCast:

• Podcasting Conference at Oxford, August 2008, Wadham College. Introduction to the various podcasting services at Oxford, Cambridge, Open and further afield.

The Steeple Project - University of...

Documents

Transcript of The Steeple Project - University of...