Commentary: Streaming in the Ivory Tower

As a result, I find when I venture outside the academy "streaming media in education" is nearly synonymous with "distance education." I could be frustrated by this, because there are still millions of students sitting in brick-and-mortar classrooms. Instead, I see amazing opportunities for producers, faculty, students, and the industry.

I see millions of students growing up with YouTube and iPods who expect to use digital media as an everyday part of their educational experience. At the same time, I see a well-developed technological landscape offering technologies that are tremendously better than when I first experimented with streaming more than a decade ago.

Educational streaming pioneers have shown us not only that it can be done, but that online media has enormous potential to enrich learning.

But while the future looks bright, we still face many obstacles. Streaming has become essential for distance education. But that leaves many professors teaching in classrooms wondering what, if any, value streaming offers their courses. In the worst cases, faculty can be downright suspicious and hostile, worrying that digital media will detract from their in-class teaching, or threaten to replace them altogether.

Yet many newly minted professors grew up with the internet. Students themselves are a positive force as well, bringing their desire to get—and make—media to college and to their teachers. Not long ago an instructor with decades of teaching experience told me, "I'm not sure I can compete with that iPod. But at least I know I can be on it."

In future installments of this column I will be addressing many of these issues, from getting faculty to support and adopt streaming media to deciding how to deliver that media to students. The values of the academy provoke interesting questions when it comes to sharing content and DRM, especially when administrators start seeing gold in the hills of programs being produced on their campuses.

I believe that educators can learn a lot from the enterprise side of the streaming media industry, where ROI and audience data comprise core metrics. Likewise, the rest of the industry can learn a lot from educators who are faced with making media pay off with very tangible results: better grades and better jobs. On top of that, I believe colleges and universities represent a huge untapped market for those in the business of selling the technologies that make streaming media go.