Excellence Gateway
Published: 8 September 2009
This case study was produced by JISC RSC (Regional Support Centres) East Midlands on behalf of the Excellence Gateway.
Sector relevance: Further education and Sixth Form colleges
Keywords: Improving teaching and learning, improving institutional effectiveness, planning and resources, video resources, TV programmes, blended learning, development of teaching and learning resources, management of resources, learning resources centre
Getting video resources to staff and learners at South East Derbyshire College was a relatively costly and time-consuming process until the College adopted a new piece of cheap software and created their own media server. This has allowed far greater use of video resources and improved the quality of the picture.
South East Derbyshire College is the largest provider of education and training to young people, adults and employers in the Amber Valley and Erewash local authority areas with campuses at Ilkeston and Heanor.
The College provides education and training for both full- and part-time learners in further education, apprenticeships, entry to employment and Train to Gain programmes.
Provision is particularly focussed in health, public services and care; construction; arts and media; preparation for life and work; business administration and law, and engineering and manufacturing technologies.
The demand for using video in education has risen in recent years as staff use media-rich resources in new ways to support their teaching.
The College started with a technician recording programmes on request, editing out the adverts and supplying video tapes to staff.
Then learning resources staff took over the service and in 2007 looked at downloading the programmes to the College network, but they hit problems with streaming across two campuses. No solution was immediately found so it was put on the back-burner for a while.
In May 2008 they switched to recording on to DVDs, but never found it totally reliable and the problem remained that this was a relatively costly process and time-intensive for staff.
Neil, the ICT Operations and Support Team Leader, breathed life back into the original idea, when he suggested that the College could use a new software package (ie GB-PVR) for capturing and streaming video clips/programmes. GB-PVR is a relatively cheap product that has a small annual charge.
GB-PVR is a full-featured personal video recorder (PVR) or media centre, which runs on Microsoft Windows. Its main function is scheduling TV recordings and watching live TV, but it can also playback a wide variety of media types across music, videos and photos.
Dorothy, Learning Centres Manager at the College, and other staff in the learning resource centre (LRC) have since been co-ordinating any requests for the recording of programmes. Dorothy also creates a weekly list of titles she thinks will be of use to the College, classifying and categorising them for someone to input later. Jim, the Reprographics Technician, uses this list to set the recordings.
Any channel that is on Freeview can be recorded and all the programme listings are shown for the following ten days. One simple click and a programme can be set to record, and will automatically be saved on to the college network.
Image 1: Screenshot of the PVR system, which is easy to use for recording TV programmes
At the same time, John, the Network Manager, built a new server to overcome the problem with distributing the video clips - or “streaming” them, as the process is often known as. He configured this to become a media server and, by using an AVS video convertor, Jim is able to process up to 35 video clips overnight so that they are transferred on to the new media server. To allow the manipulation of the resources the College holds an ERA licence.
The video clips are made available via a new interface and are catalogued using the same colour-coded subject categories as the other learning resources. This directs staff and learners to the range of video materials that are available and, once they have logged onto the media server, with one click the video will open in Windows Media Player.
The bank of resources is maintained by Dorothy via her “working page” (see image below). From here, she can standardise the names of files, re-allocate colour-coding if necessary and delete unused resources so that the media server is continually up to date.
Image 2: Screenshot of the back-end "working page", which allows for easy management of the TV programmes
Information about the videos has been put into the College VLE (virtual learning environment), Moodle. This increases the options for learning about the video resources available and, when an ERA+ licence is available, will also allow offsite usage.
The quality of the programmes is very good, cleaner than the DVD and video resources that were used previously. It also does away with the need to provide additional equipment to play videos and DVDs. Programmes can also be viewed either by a class group or by individuals.
The system is easy to use, which has helped ensure that staff in the College are keen to include video in their learning and teaching.
After a successful start in the testing phase, the new system has been gradually rolled out across the College. A soft launch has seen cards advertising the service go out with reprographic jobs, five-minute demonstrations in staffrooms (as this is all the time needed), and informally showing staff whilst they've been visiting the LRC.
Image 3: Screenshot of the colour-coded resources: colour-coding makes it easy for staff and learners to find relevant videos
Small-scale tests of multiple simultaneous usage have proved successful, so everyone is hopeful that this will continue as it is used by more people. Feedback from staff and learners has been very positive so far with staff seeing its potential for class use.
Dorothy says:
"I'm very pleased with the quality of the images and how easy the system is to use. The media server is an exciting development and a testament to the skill and co-operation of the whole of the learning resources team."
One of the areas that caused the most difficulty in setting up the simple system was to get barcodes attached to files for Alice – the College's library management system. This was resolved by simply printing out the master list that Dorothy creates, using it as an input list and attaching the barcodes to it.
A knock-on consequence of having these video resources available to learners is that more sturdy headphones are required. Thus, the LRC has had to order sets for the machines in both centres and have set-up systems to try and protect them from being damaged too quickly.
An aim for Christmas 2009 is to have finished the process of transferring all the existing relevant recordings on to the media server so that the use of video recorders can cease.
As the number of videos on the media server continues to grow, this raises the inevitable question of capacity. The College will be looking to increase the file space available for video as demand continues to grow. It also plans to ensure that the resources on the media server are continually refreshed and any redundant programmes are removed.
At the time of publishing this case study it was not possible for the College to get usage figures for the recordings, but it is a question that the team plan to look at. They also hope to purchase a piece of software that will automatically remove adverts from recordings.
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