Webb’s Media

Let’s start with, the presenter/sales rep (let’s call a spade a spade) began with an anecdote about MIT professors, that some have expressed that “someone will have to pry the chalk from their cold dead hand, they’re using no technology at all.” Right, just written and spoken language (two underrated technologies these days) and chalk (with its miraculous ephemeral nature). Combine this comment, with the fact that this presentation was at 8:30 am, it was hard to maintain an open mind about the value of a presentation that doesn’t acknowledge the technological innovation of chalk. I am generally not in the mood for technological evangelists first thing after breakfast.

The presentation was clearly geared from a business perspective, and if I were in charge of purchasing, I would not be sold. I wish that this presentation started out with a demonstration, to give a better understanding of what this software can do. Use Gagne’s principle of gain attention for goodness sake. Much of the rationale for why this tool will be helpful is aggravating, because personally, I don’t need to know WHY students need access to their course materials asynchronously, because I already believe that there should be materials available. And as a designer, I have no idea why I would use this tool instead of my existing available tools. Yes, if the ease of use is as advertised, it could make this accessible to faculty, however, the biggest barrier I have in working with faculty and getting them to add lectures to their course—even audio, when they have all the equipment—they don’t make time to do it.

Let’s start with the rationale presented for why I would use this product:
1) Student retention: The information is hard, they don’t understand it, and then they leave. So this is to provide them with the tools that they need, in order to deter dropouts by “being able to give them the access that they need online.” I am interested in retaining students, and this might be another way to provide material in a different way. However, what is so different about this from any number of the materials: articulate, captivate, camtasia, centra, plain old audio, plain old video, captioned video, recording smartboard/tablet, and the list goes on…

2) Financial: Colleges can recognize more dollars in the long run (as our dropping student won’t ask for fee reimbursement). I understand that colleges are businesses, however, justifying integration of technology purely from an economic standpoint is annoying if you are on the instructional side. (And again, if I were an administrator, I would want to know why this, more than other video and flash presentations is retaining students.) Further, the presenter describes, we would adopt this technology because it will differentiate our (educational) product. Not our student’s learning (though to be fair, learning outcomes are mentioned periodically). Pedagogically, I am not hearing what makes this product more engaging than other similar products. This whole presentation is designed at a business/marketing audience.

Finally, after 40 minutes we get a demonstration. This interface has video in the corner, smartboard in the main portion of the screen. Underneath the video, there is a thumbnail sequence so students can choose between “modules.” As I watch the video with the writing, I found the simultaneous video and text distracting, but as the student, you can block out the video, which distracts attention from what is being demoed in the main screen. However, one of the Technology in Education awards at this conference demonstrated how one would record almost the same thing, a math lecture, using the smartboard and camtasia. I don’t know the cost of this product to compare the price.

“The best tools are the ones where faculty have to do nothing and voila, the presentation is online.” Now I really feel like I’m trying to be sold something. I have yet to find a new technology that doesn’t require some learning curve, and to say it won’t sets people up for failure. Further, just providing a technology by itself is never an ideal solution—faculty should be given a space to contemplate their instructional methods and strategies, and frankly, should be designing class time to be more than just lectures. Of course, I don’t believe that throwing the baby out with the bathwather is necessary—this could be a fantastic tool to require students to view the lecture part before the collaboratively designed class time.

So yes, I am sold on making lecture materials available to students online, though I’m not sure what this particular product does that we are not already trying to do. However, at the end, the faculty member I was attending with was very excited about the product and wants to look into it…so apparently I’m being a little hard on this presentation by focusing on the message instead the magical technology. And I am hard-pressed to identify another tool that integrates all three of the components (video, smartboard/powerpoint, and breadcrumb trail of modules) in this one interface.