Video-web learning platforms

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History

Video is not new to Computer-supported collaborative learning and has been used in education for decades already. In the eighties and nineties, it was mainly used to record conferences, lecures or educational films that could be watched by the learners. Even today, large repositories of video learning material are available and can be used in many instructional programs. Research here is focusing on quality standards and user-friendly editing tools. Video podcasting also is a significant resource for teachers.

In the nineties, new technologies allowing web transmission of video have developed (see wikipedia page on streaming media. Improvement of CPU power and bandwidth allow for direct viewing of video content without downloading. Video sharing sites like youtube have gained great popularity and some like teachertube are being used for training.

The possibilities to manipulate video material has soon been discovered in instructional technologies research. Written or oral annotation of video films for instructional purposes (Bargeron 1999) is being explored as well as the production of short, remodeled sharable extracts ("dives") by editing, zooming/transforming and annotate video (Pea 2004).

After 2000, the introduction of interactive telecommunication technologies with two-way synchronous viewing (See wikipedia on Videotelephony) broadened the horizon of video use and made videochats like skype and ichat popular. These technologies opened new perspectives for Videoconferencing and have prompted the development of the wide field (and industry) of Online video tutoring.

From an instructional perspective of distant learning and of using C3MS(Community, Collaboration, Content Management System), integrating synchronous video with some interactivity on a learning platform seems to be the natural next step.

Definition

Clearly, the instructional tool we try to describe here first is based on social constructivist learning. A learning platform that integrates some form of live video picture of participants and/or trainer allows for better social exchange and helps to adress some of the communication and tutoring problems encountered with chat or with asynchronous text communication without synchronous video contact. Synchronous exchange allows the trainer and the participants to be in an apprenticeship relation since it can include showing and imitation.

More than just videoconferencing or video chats, a video-web platform allows group learning where registered participants can see each other, chat and share documents of all kinds. The sessions can be recorded for later analysis (Jauregi 2008)