Objective
Prior to the launch of this project, a rudimentary solution was in place, which required a great deal of manual effort. A teacher would provide the raw material to the OSC personnel. Subsequently, each piece would be converted and published at a URL, which would then be passed to the teacher and subsequently to students. This tedious process is probably the main reason of the infrastructure’s limited popularity.
With free-of-charge video sharing Web sites on the rise, one might consider abandoning the existing setup altogether and favoring the use of YouTube, for instance. However, this raises a number of concerns. Most of the Web sites are supported by advertisements. In addition, many of them offer additional features which may add to the entertainment value, but are highly likely to have a negative impact on the learning process. There is also the matter of ownership and access rights: what if a video clip’s target audience is restricted to a certain group of students? Finally, material used for education purposes can be made exempt from certain copyright restrictions, but only if maintained internally.
Thus, it is certainly favorable to rely on an in-house video sharing solution. The first goal of this project is therefore to thoroughly streamline the video sharing process. Manual intervention by the OSC personnel will be avoided where possible, allowing for a large-scale deployment. The intention is to achieve all this using solely free and open source software, without compromising usability.
The project’s second, equally important goal is to ensure tight integration with PointCarré, the university’s adaptation of the open source e-learning environment Dokeos. A variety of other respected institutions, both national and international, also deploy Dokeos-based solutions. As such, the results of this project will not be limited to the Vrije Universiteit Brussel infrastructure.
Moreover, the development of generic libraries and supporting tools allows for deployment separate from a Dokeos environment.