Integrating Computer-Generated Multimedia Applications into the
Academe: Lectures, Conference Presentations,
and Professional Presentations
Allen Francis Ketcham
Texas A&M University – Kingsville
Andrea Moore
Multimedia Developer
Chalk and Talk: Passé
The contemporary student has been brought up on MTV and high-speed action video games. Their attention spans are notoriously short. The traditional teaching method of lecturing while the students take notes is becoming less popular. The students’ interest is more difficult to maintain. Therefore, professors have to invent new methods to deal with the new student. One answer is to use PowerPoint to deliver the lecture. However, this method has one great drawback. The darkening of the room results in sleepy and sleeping students. This article offers a solution. By using multimedia in lectures, professors can maintain, and even increase, the students’ interest.
Following is a list of six academic multimedia projects. We discuss the audience and purpose each project. Then the software and the construction of the projects are examined.
[1] Project Name: Philosophy Department Website
Professors’ and department websites are in vogue. Some universities require their professors to have a professional website. Certainly, some of these are very sophisticated. But, almost certainly, departments have refined websites.
This first project example is the website for a one-person philosophy department. Some small universities and colleges are forced to hold together a program with a small staff, occasionally with just one person. Small staffing makes the department website more important, because the contact the department has with the outside world is necessarily minimal.
Audience
Philosophy students, both on and off campus
The primary audience for this first project is the university’s philosophy students. However, clearly, the site has attracted the interest of philosophy students from other universities.
Purpose
A one-person department is dependent on the students, because there are no teaching colleagues. The professor and the students need to stay in contact and develop a close relationship. To ensure student interest, it is necessary to have considerable communication with the students and to make certain that the students have quick access to one another.
Software
(1) Microsoft FrontPage 97, (2) Notepad, (3) Jasc Paint Shop Pro 4, (4) NetStudio 2000
Construction
(1) Interface, (2) Message Board, (3) Courses, (4) Events, (5) Philosophy Minors
Heuristic Programming
This is a fairly straightforward Website project. The main interface was constructed in Microsoft FrontPage 97, because of its “WYSIWYG” design capabilities. FrontPage, however, has a tendency to alter HTML coding to its own specifications, leading to frustrating and unwanted results, so all of the double-swap Javascripting for the main page link buttons, as well as any subsequent editing, was hand-coded using Notepad, a simple text editing software application. All of the subsidiary pages were hand-coded in Notepad.
The graphics for the site’s page backgrounds, main page link buttons, and other photographs were edited using Jasc Paint Shop Pro. The graphics for the buttons were converted to negative and saved as a second file. Both copies of each image were then used to create the buttons’ rollover effect. Each button also includes a third image, the link’s destination page name, which appears, on rollover, in the center of the button layout to complete the double-swap Javascript effect.
The main page background graphic was created by taking the original, 512x64 pixel photograph, which was then copied, reversed, and pasted onto the original image to create a 1024x64 pixel image. That image is then repeated on the page to become a solid background. Each of the other backgrounds was created in much the same way, by taking the original image from the link button and pasting it onto a solid white 1024x70 pixel background strip, which, when repeated, creates the vertical image-strip effect on the subsidiary pages.
The site’s banner was created using a combination of Paint Shop Pro and NetStudio 2000. The university logo graphic was edited for size and color in Paint Shop Pro, then imported into NetStudio and placed onto the banner with the Parthenon image and text. Shadow and 3-D effects were added in NetStudio to complete the site logo, which is repeated on the message board.
The photographs and other graphic images on the Minors, Events, and Club pages were cropped for visual interest and size, as needed, using Paint Shop Pro.
[2] Project Name: Understanding & Misunderstanding Ethics Audience
Off-campus professional organizations that are in need of short-term training in ethics
Academics are encouraged to consult in their discipline and sometimes even required to have an “off-campus presence.” This second project is designed to meet the ethics training needs of off-campus groups like professional associations, government programs, small corporations with federal grants, police departments, and many others.
Purpose
To successfully give off-campus professional presentations, it is necessary to have a polished production. A well-constructed multimedia creation with sufficient color, movement, and sound can help keep the interest of the audience. Also, multimedia presentations offer the quality professionals expect.
Software
(1) Ulead Video Capture 7.0, (2) Ulead Video Editor 7.0, (3) Microsoft PowerPoint 2000, (4) Jasc Paint Shop Pro
Construction:
(1) Movie Clips, (2) Text
Heuristic Programming
The construction of this project began with transferring raw video footage from VHS tape to digital media. This was accomplished by connecting a digital video camera to a standard VHS player. The tape was played back and recorded into DV format, which was then captured from digital tape to computer, via FireWire connection and Ulead Video Capture 7.0.
Once the raw footage was saved in digital format, it was edited into individual clips, using Ulead Video Editor 7.0. The individual raw clips were then edited for time and content and saved in AVI format.
The presentation was created in Microsoft PowerPoint. The text was formatted to emphasize content and to assure visibility. Next, the video clips inserted to illustrate the concepts under discussion.
The main concern with this project was to ensure that the required codec was present on the presentation computer, in order to allow the video clips to be viewed.
[3] Project Name: The Logic of Ethics
[A] Audience
Philosophy students and professors in general
Because of the emphasis on logic and truth tables, this project is not appropriate for the general public. The presentation assumes that the audience has some training in logic.
[B] Secondary Audience
Sophisticated Professionals
This third project is similar to the second, Understanding and Misunderstanding Ethics, but is more sophisticated. There are two audiences in mind for the third project. The secondary audience is post-graduate level educated professionals. This group should have completed a level of education to be able to comprehend the logic involved.
Purpose
General lectures and conference presentations
The purpose is to give effective on-campus lectures and presentations. This multimedia project has less “sparkle” and more hard data. The intent is to be able to offer a complex, yet short, ethics presentation. This project adds a layer of logic, thereby allowing the presenter to look both at the ethical theories and the logic of those competing ethical systems. This offers a chance to interest a more sophisticated audience.
Software
(1) Ulead Video Editor 7.0, (2) Microsoft PowerPoint 2000
Construction:
(1) Movie Clips, (2) Text
Heuristic Programming
This is a secondary, streamlined, version of the original project, Understanding and Misunderstanding Ethics. It was edited both for time and content.
Some of the original video clips were shortened using Ulead Video Editor 7.0, and all of the clips were re-rendered to reduce file size.
The text in the PowerPoint presentation was edited and simplified to better accommodate the intended audiences.
[4] Project Name: Linear Programming Polytope DVD
[A] Audience
Professional Decision Science Professors
This is a multimedia project that was requested by professors from many universities. The project is developed from a monograph distributed to the Western Decision Science Association. The recipients of the monograph reacted by asking for a DVD they could use in class. This multimedia project is a response to that request.
[B] Secondary Audience
University business administration and engineering students comprise the secondary audience. The authors of this fourth project intend to use it for their own students.
[A] Purpose
Conference Presentation
The above-mentioned monograph was presented in 2001 at a Western Decision Science Association workshop special session at their Vancouver, Canada conference. This new and attractive multimedia DVD will be given at a future international meeting of the Western Decision Science Association.
[B] Secondary Purpose
To lecture university students on the geometry of linear programming
Software
(1) Adobe Illustrator 10, (2) Adobe Photoshop 7.0, (3) Macromedia Flash MX Professional 2004, (4) Ulead Audio Editor 7.0, (5) Notepad, (6) Broderbund Print Shop CD Label Creator, (7) Ulead Video Capture 7.0, (8) Ulead Video Editor 7.0
Construction:
(1) Introduction, (2) Interface, (3) Text, (4) Mountain, (5) Movie, (6) Algorithm
Heuristic Programming
The DVD project is a massive undertaking, under construction, involving creating a user-friendly interface, translating test and simple graphics from print medium to interactive form, and creating 3-D visual examples if its concepts. The project also includes a live-action video, as well as animations and other graphics, which explain and illustrate the concepts.
The interface and most of the animations are Macromedia Flash-based. The introduction and title graphic animation was constructed using a combination of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop and Macromedia Flash. The audio track for the introduction was created and edited in Ulead Audio Editor 7.0. The background photograph was color-reversed in Photoshop and the polytope graphic was created, then copied and altered to produce the “reflection.” The background photo, polytope, and reflection were then composited in Illustrator and the title text was added. The resulting graphic composition was used for the cover art for the DVD and became the basis for the introduction animation and the project interface.
The cover graphic, in its component parts, was imported into Macromedia Flash, and the polytope, title text, and reflections were animated and the audio clip added to complete the introduction.
The menu is a Flash movie clip, a stand-alone mini-program. From the menu, the user is able to access the different chapters. Each chapter, whether text, graphic, video, or animation, is a separate file, called, through ActionScript coding, when the corresponding menu item is selected.
The text-based chapters are fairly straightforward. Each file was created in Notepad with simple HTML tags and saved as a text file with the .TXT extension. Then, a separate Flash file containing a dynamic text field was created and ActionScript coding was added to call the appropriate text file into the text field.
The mountain animation was constructed in several layers. The background graphic of Mount Everest was overlaid with the path line, animated frame-by-frame, from the “base camp” starting point to the optimum point at the summit. Each of the points is a button graphic, which can be clicked to view more detailed information or animated illustration. The buttons also have a rollover effect that will display general coordinate information for that point. The rollover effect was achieved by a combination of coding on the buttons and creation of separate files to hold the coordinate information graphics. The graphic files are called by the code and appear when the mouse rolls over the button.
The major challenges of this project are assuring cross-platform compatibility, creating an interface that will adapt to various monitor resolutions, and insuring that the proper codec is used so video can be viewed on the user’s machine.
[5] Project Name: A Platonic View of a Necessarily True Contradiction Found in Matrix Deep Space
[A] Audience
Philosophy professors and other professors of interest
This is the most complex of the six projects and is clearly not directed to the general public.
[B] Secondary Audience
Another audience is philosophy and mathematics students. Students with some training in mathematics and logic could understand this multimedia presentation.
Purpose
To visually express a philosophy thought experiment
This highly complex multimedia project is also the most “sensual” of the six discussed in this paper because of its beautiful music and graphics. The additional sensuality is suggested by the esoteric nature of the subject matter. The subject matter is defined by the fact that logical propositions have two well-known limits. The first case is the tautology. The other case is the contradiction. Tautologies are necessarily true because they do not rule out any possibility. On the other hand, contradictions are necessarily false because they rule out all possibilities. This multimedia project looks for a case where a contradiction (p · ~p) is true (which, oddly, is a contradiction itself).
Software
(1) Serif ImpactPlus, (2) Ulead GIF Animator 5, (3) Adobe Photoshop 7.0, (4) Macromedia Flash MX Professional 2004, (5) Ulead Video Capture 7.0, (6) Ulead Video Editor 7.0, (7) Ulead Audio Editor 7.0, (8) Microsoft PowerPoint 2000, (9) MusicMatch Jukebox 8.2
Construction:
(1) Text, (2) Dimensional Visualizations, (3) Movie clips, (4) Presentation Interface
Heuristic Programming
The esoteric concepts of this project lend themselves to, almost require, graphic visualizations. The project contains three basic types of animations: 3D, video, and GIF. Each of the animations required at least two programs to create the desired effect.
The first type, the 3D effect, involved animating two matrices, one 5 x 8 and the other 8 x 14. The basic drawing and animation for each was accomplished in Serif ImpactPlus. The cubes were drawn, stacked, colored, textured, and then animated. When completed, the 3D matrices were rendered as animated GIF files. The GIF files were then opened in Ulead GIF Animator, where each frame was output and saved as a separate image file. All of the image files were then imported into Macromedia Flash, placed on the timeline, and converted to a movie clip.
Once the movie clip’s raw animation was completed, the numbers were added to each cell of the matrix and effects created to move the numbers with the row and column animation and to fade out and in. A button was added and coded to stop and start the animation at key points. The Flash files were initially meant to play as full-screen, standalone files, with an exit button to close the file when finished, but because of a safety feature built into PowerPoint, which caused a warning message to appear when the files were called from within the presentation interface, the Flash files had to be redesigned to be called via HTML coding and viewed in a browser window. The exit buttons were no longer necessary, so were removed.
The second animation type, video, involved reviewing several hours of videotape to select and catalog footage for the video portions of the project presentation. The selected video was then copied from VHS to digital tape and captured to the computer hard drive, using Ulead Video Capture.
Once the footage was captured, it was edited, in Ulead Video Editor, into the various segments. After the initial editing, including adding transitions and titles, music was chosen and edited for timing in the third component of the Ulead Editing Suite, Audio Editor. The music was then added to the edited video clips. The finished video clips were then rendered as AVI files and embedded in the PowerPoint presentation.
The third type of animation, the GIF, actually required two types of frame-by-frame video animation. These clips did not start as raw video footage, but were created in much the same manner as the matrix animations, in ImpactPlus. The resulting GIF animations were, again, imported into GIF Animator, in order to obtain the single-frame photograph files.
One of these two animations was then recompiled and rendered into an AVI video clip simply by placing the photographs on the video timeline, creating a frame-by-frame animation, which was then embedded into the PowerPoint presentation.
The other GIF animation needed to be superimposed on existing video footage. This was a much more involved process. Separate frames of the existing video had to be captured, using Paint Shop Pro. Then, in Adobe Photoshop, each of the GIF frame photographs was placed on top of the corresponding video frame photograph. The resulting composite photographs were then reinserted in the video to complete the animation effect.
The project also includes several static illustrations. Several of these were scanned from the original drawings, and then placed in the PowerPoint presentation. The others were created in Microsoft Word and imported into PowerPoint.
The main challenge of this project was to integrate all of the various types of animation and other illustrations into a single interface to produce a cohesive and attractive presentation.
[6] Project Name: Academic Housing Exchange
Audience
Sabbatical Research Professors
Research professors often find a need to procure housing during sabbaticals or other research-related leaves. On a professor’s pay, it is difficult to find adequate housing for themselves and their families while traveling for research purposes. So, it is envisioned that professors could trade housing if their housing needs coincide.
Purpose
To attempt to find housing for research professors while they are away from their home base
This is a closed and secure site. It is only meant for legitimate research professors that need to trade housing for a short period.
Software
(1) Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004, (2) Notepad, (3) Macromedia Flash MX 2004, (4) Jasc Paint Shop Pro 9.0, (5) NetStudio 2000, (6) Adobe Photoshop 7.0, (8) Microsoft Access
Construction:
(1) Register, (2) Login, (3) Individual housings, (4) Exchange requests
Heuristic Programming
When completed, Academic Housing Exchange site, currently under construction, will, require users to undergo a registration and validation process, for security purposes, prior to access. The registration form was constructed using Macromedia Dreamweaver for the initial programming and Notepad for tweaking. The form will be connected to a database, which will collect and store user data for login validation. Each first-time user will be required to register and create a username and password. The registration information will then be validated and the user will be notified via email confirmation. Once validated, the user can log in, via the Flash-based login page, and browse the site to find available housing or submit a new listing.
The site interface was created in Notepad and checked for compatibility in both Internet Explorer and Netscape. Each button consists of two images, one embossed and the other engraved. Both copies of each image were then used to create the buttons’ rollover effect. Each button also includes a third image, a photo of the link’s corresponding home, which appears, on rollover, in the center of the button layout to complete the double-swap Javascript effect. The photographs were edited for size and visual interest in Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop.
Summary
Students are too sophisticated to sit watching the professor’s back while she talks and chalks. They require the stimulation that multimedia offers, and not the dark monotonous droning of the PowerPoint presentations. Clearly, students do not want to sit in the dark watching the professor flipping slides in a PowerPoint presentation pre-packaged by the textbook editors. This paper has illustrated ways that professors can incorporate stimulating and powerful multimedia tools into their lectures without becoming dependent solely on PowerPoint slideshows.
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