TORONTO, August 21, 2002 -- This fall a group of 50 students in one course at York University will be able to view their lectures in a seamless multi-media presentation on the course Web site. The experiment is designed to enhance learning and give students who are working to finance their education greater flexibility in balancing work and study.
MediaSite Live software, developed by Sonic Foundry® Inc., captures and streams the lecturer as well as any type of digital content, from video to graphics, in a seamless manner, and includes the ability to switch back and forth from PowerPoint® slides to screen shots to live Web pages to electronic white boards.
"Students expect television-like quality of presentation if they’re working on a video screen and this gives them an experience as close to television quality as you can get," said Dalton Kehoe, a professor of social science and communications studies who will be teaching the course. He said the technology is a vast improvement on video conferencing.
The lectures will be given in the new, ‘green’ Computer Science building, where lecture halls have been wired for multi-media instruction. Students can watch the lecture live in the Calumet College computer lab, or watch later. The interactive on-demand features of the software allow for navigation and replaying of portions of the lecture to increase understanding, which could be particularly helpful to international students for whom English is a second language. Kehoe, who has lectured extensively on the effective use of technology in teaching, is also developing a variety of interactive tools on his course Web site that will encourage students to test their knowledge and engage more fully with the material outside the classroom. The lectures will be stored for one week and students will have 24/7 access to one of the best labs on campus to view it, but they will also be required to attend regular tutorials to benefit from personal interaction with professors, instructors and their classmates.
"Many students work 20 to 40 hours a week to pay for their education, and they need flexibility in scheduling classroom attendance," said Kehoe, noting York’s tradition as an innovator in the delivery of education. "But there can be no replacement for personal interaction in the classroom," he said, adding that online education is still a very labour intensive activity and less efficient than face-to-face instruction.
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For further information, please contact:
| Dalton Kehoe | Susan Bigelow |
| Division of Social Science | Media Relations |
| York University | York University |
| 416-736-5755 | 416-736-2100, ext. 22091 |
| dkehoe@yorku.ca | sbigelow@yorku.ca |
YU/068/02
