Some Syracuse University professors have been trying for a year to post required class videos onto Blackboard or other online sites for their students to watch.

But there is an SU solution to having to brave the cold for required viewing sessions. It is called Video Showcase at video.syr.edu.

With Blackboard, applications, space and copyright issues present a problem, said Michael Morrison, manager of academic applications in Information Technology and Services.

Morrison said there are no plans at this time to add any functions for playing videos to Blackboard, but that there are other sites open to faculty for which Blackboard could serve as an access point by providing links.

The most popular method to show a film is for professors to hold viewings around campus at a set time for students to go watch. Another method is for professors to put the video on reserve in the library and students can go to the library to watch the required film.

But some students said they would prefer if these movies were put online.

‘It’s harder to go out and watch them when I have prior conflicts,’ said Pamela Cutler, a sophomore mechanical engineer major. ‘Also, with online movies it’s easier, because you can pause the movie and split it into two parts.’

Morrison said Blackboard doesn’t have the tools necessary to play longer videos, though faculty members can upload other materials, including short videos.

Video Showcase is a site that was created for SU at which faculty, students, alumni and staff can post videos at any point.

‘One advantage of video.syr.edu is that it’s a video server,’ Morrison said, ‘so it has the advanced video functions built in that Blackboard doesn’t have.’

Scott Nadzan, director of technology services, said as long as the person posting has permission from the copyright to post the video online, then it can be added to the site. Those with an administrative account from Video Showcase’s content management system have no limits in size or length of the video.

‘We want users to post anything that will enhance teaching, learning and communication,’ Nadzan said in an e-mail to The Daily Orange. ‘Another advantage of the system is utilizing the flash streaming video technology, which is a great delivery mechanismfor teaching, learning and communications.’

Another problem with showing videos on Blackboard is that certain software is needed to view the videos.

‘It could be uploaded to Blackboard properly, but if you don’t have the right software, whether on your own computer or the computers in the labs, it won’t work,’ Morrison said.

Blackboard also has limited space, which makes it difficult for long videos to work. The average course has 300 megabyte of space, but there have been several courses that required more room.

‘We’ve had sites with more than 1 gigabyte, but that’s not necessarily someone with a lot of large video files,’ Morrison said. ‘They usually have a lot of student submissions, for example, large files of students’ drawings.’

The size of a video file depends on the quality, the viewing size and the length of the viewing time. A typical DVD is 5 to 7 GB.

Blackboard does allow video clips to be posted. Morrison said that the most easily viewed video clips were five to 10 minutes long.

Gerlinde Sanford, the department chair of language, literature and linguistics, said copyright is a problem for her department. She said she feels being able to post the videos to Blackboard is something that they should be able to do.

‘I see that this is not easy for the university to overcome,’ she said. ‘If there was a way for the videos to be posted and not be copied by the students, then it would be something we could do.’

Morrison and Nadzan said that they rely on their users not to post copyright material.

‘We respect the intellectual property of others, and we ask our users to do the same,’ Nadzan said. ‘We do not post copyrighted content without theconsent of the content owner.’

Morrison said the content posted to Blackboard is entirely up to the professors. The service description on the Blackboard Web site asks that faculty not post copyright material.

‘We don’t play copyright police,’ Morrison said. ‘It’s up to the faculty to check. We have over 2,000 courses with material this semester, so even if I wanted to check, I couldn’t.’

To legally upload content, a user must pay for the rights to use the copyright content through the copyright company. An outside service, such as Swank, Inc., is also available at a small fee to connect a user to the original copyrighter. The cost depends on the content.

Other students said they preferred the experience of watching the movie at scheduled times to having the movies posted online.

‘I think the experience of watching a movie with other people adds something to it,’ said Mary Cappabianca, a sophomore international relations and public relations major. ‘Group reactions make it more memorable and enriching to the learning experience.’

krkoerti@syr.edu

Published on February 1, 2009 at 12:00 pm