Streaming Video Goes to College
Does Production Quality Matter?
Do students and faculty care about production quality for classroom video? The answer depends on whom you ask, but the general consensus is that for most users, it doesn’t need to be television quality, so long as students can hear the lecture and see relevant materials, such as a PowerPoint presentation.
But that’s not to say you can release just anything. You still need to have decent sound and lighting, no matter what the content is, says Riismandel. "Production value is always important to them whether they realize it or not is what I learned. We won’t turn out crap, so there is always a sophistication in production. When we record every instance of a class lecture, it’s ephemeral. The life of that video product is that semester. We’re not going to throw a ton of value on it, but it’s still very important that students never have to struggle with video or audio in whatever they are watching. The quality should be in service to the content. It’s great when they say video looks great, but better when they say the content is great," he says. Riismandel says he refuses to record if he can’t capture the content with at least a modicum of quality, and he has told professors he can’t record in their space because the lighting or sound is not of sufficient quality to produce a decent video.
That doesn’t mean that the video has to be National Geographic or Discovery Channel quality says Morris, and if it were, it would need to be choreographed very differently. "Students are used to stand and deliver. They don’t need National Geographic production value. Can they see [and hear] the content?" He says this gives students the luxury of just listening to the in-person lecture without having to take notes, try to type, and understand at the same time. When watching the video, they can pause and rewind to get a good feel for the material, which is what he considers the goal of this effort.
At Daemon College, Klenja says students care only about hearing what’s said in the video unless it’s something like an on-campus morning news broadcast, for which they put equal emphasis on video. "The students have never mentioned they wanted production quality of a television. It’s more of a review thing, but I’ve been pushing for us to have a morning news show on campus, and there I see a higher value in looking at production … but for just a review of course work, [quality is] never mentioned even if it’s in poor light. As long as they can get the gist of what the professor is saying and the audio is half-way decent."
The classroom has come a long way in a generation, and streaming video is a big part of that change. As more classrooms are updated with increasingly sophisticated setups and better lighting and sound, the quality of the video will only get better, and its use will increase. The increasing use of Flash has made format less of an issue, but as Real, Windows, and QuickTime work to add further improvements in delivery quality (such as high-definition viewing), choosing a format remains a difficult decision for some applications.
Regardless of the method or the format, it’s about making life more convenient for students, many of whom are increasingly doing more work away from campus. Being able to save a commute into class not only saves time, but having a video of the lecture timeshifts the content, making it available for the student whenever it is convenient. It seems as the college experience itself shifts and changes, streaming video will be a big part of it.
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