Collaboration and Education Group

1. Collaboration and Education Group Anoop Gupta Jonathan Grudin David Bargeron Steven White Liwei He Yong Rui Intro for EdCU talk: Hullo! My name is Anoop Gupta. I lead a group in the areas of Collaboration and Education at MSR. Today I will like to introduce you to some projects that we are doing that are relevant to the education context. Let me begin by saying a few more words about our group. ... As we head into the 21st century, it represents a major turning point for our society. As we head into the next millenium, we clearly leave the industrial age behind and step into the information age. Ability to gather, sift thru, assimilate, synthesize, reason with, and create new information will be skills critical to survival and success. A solid education will no longer be an option, but a necessity. While we are at the brink of this change, we find that our education system has not changed in a long time, both pedagogically and institutionally. Pedagogically, ��.. A person entering a classroom from 50 years ago will feel quite at home � As Elliot Soloway from U. Michigan once put it, in majority of our classrooms, we still take one piece of stone and rub it on another to teach. I am not here to say whether what we are doing today is right or wrong (because there is little research to say otherwise), but what does seem clear is that there is not a lot of questioning that is going on about whether there is a better way to do it...Intro for EdCU talk: Hullo! My name is Anoop Gupta. I lead a group in the areas of Collaboration and Education at MSR. Today I will like to introduce you to some projects that we are doing that are relevant to the education context. Let me begin by saying a few more words about our group. ... As we head into the 21st century, it represents a major turning point for our society. As we head into the next millenium, we clearly leave the industrial age behind and step into the information age. Ability to gather, sift thru, assimilate, synthesize, reason with, and create new information will be skills critical to survival and success. A solid education will no longer be an option, but a necessity. While we are at the brink of this change, we find that our education system has not changed in a long time, both pedagogically and institutionally. Pedagogically, ��.. A person entering a classroom from 50 years ago will feel quite at home � As Elliot Soloway from U. Michigan once put it, in majority of our classrooms, we still take one piece of stone and rub it on another to teach. I am not here to say whether what we are doing today is right or wrong (because there is little research to say otherwise), but what does seem clear is that there is not a lot of questioning that is going on about whether there is a better way to do it...

2. Collaboration and Education Group Formed about 12 months ago Mission: To explore novel technologies and applications that enhance collaboration and education / training Current work focuses on streaming media Research model Evaluation: Laboratory and Field Studies

3. Focus on Communication Effective access/use of information is key to a modern corporation (Digital Nervous System) Much of this communication can be considered presentations, formal or informal slides and documents capture only a small part low-cost capture and on-demand availability Relevant participants are often not collocated must create sense of presence and awareness provide interactivity across time and place

4. Three Issues that Frame Our Research There are too many presentations to attend ability to time-compress talks ability to summarize talks indexes for quick search/access Knowledge-creation does not end when the talk ends facilitating �in-context� asynchronous discussion Talks redesigned for online and asynchronous access social implications changes in organization and presentation of talks

5. Ongoing Projects MSTE and MURL: Online Seminars Time Compression and Skimming MRAS: Multimedia Annotations Flatland: Telepresentation System

8. MSTE Online Presentations Logs of ~10K sessions involving over 2K users Some results: On-demand audience about 40% of live audience 60% < 5 minutes Viewers jump around video Initial portions much more likely to be watched Presentations will be designed differently in future Present key messages early in talk Present key messages early in slide Use meaningful slide titles Reveal talk structure in slide titles Consider post-processing talk for on-line viewers

9. Analysis of Online Presentation Viewing Logs of ~10K sessions involving over 2K users Some results: On-demand audience about 40% of live audience 60% < 5 minutes Viewers jump around video Initial portions much more likely to be watched Presentations will be designed differently in future Present key messages early in talk Present key messages early in slide Use meaningful slide titles Reveal talk structure in slide titles Consider post-processing talk for on-line viewers

10. Time Compression: Synchronized Audio and Video To preserve pitch: throw away portion of each 100ms chunk, then stitch together Basic signal processing well known, but several systems issues Results of lab studies: People choose ~1.4 speed, don�t adjust much They like it �I think it will become a necessity� Once people have experienced it they will never want to go back. Makes viewing long videos much, much easier.� Comprehension may go up

13. Skimming: Compression Goes Nonlinear To beat 2x speedup, must throw away content Sources of information audio: pauses, intonation, speech-to-text and NLP video: scene changes other: slide-changes, previous viewers� patterns Lab studies of 4x-5x speedup Viewers learn from automatic summaries Viewers like and learn more when author-edited Mixed-initiative summarization is promising

14. Ongoing Projects MSTE and MURL: Online Seminars Time Compression and Skimming MRAS: Multimedia Annotations Flatland: Telepresentation System

16. Initial Lab Studies of Annotated Video Personal note-taking (MRAS vs. Paper) ~1 note / minute in each condition positioning: none in paper; ~10-15s later in MRAS all subjects preferred MRAS (although more time), and thought more useful for future reference Shared notes study text preferred to audio 14/18 stated more participation than in �live� class auto-tracking particularly useful Also talk about experiments being conducted with Stanford this quarter in EE-182. Both the mission and the problems encountered.Also talk about experiments being conducted with Stanford this quarter in EE-182. Both the mission and the problems encountered.

17. Annotation: Field Studies & Future Work MSTE class to use MRAS and recorded lectures Can we emulate live-classroom discussion in an asynchronous environment using MRAS? Will people interact/learn more using MRAS rather than in �live� classroom environments? How can we stimulate discussion / community formation in asynchronous environments? MS Usability Engineers: �highlights tapes� Video is now organized by annotations Email distribution, playlists become key features Possible wider use in development Unified annotation platform architecture storage, naming, sharing, user interface

18. Flatland Telepresentation System Joint project with the Virtual Worlds Group Flexible architecture for rapidly prototyping distributed collaborative applications

19. Flatland

20. Flatland Telepresentation System Joint project with the Virtual Worlds Group Flexible architecture for rapidly prototyping distributed collaborative applications Initial use in 3 multi-session MSTE classes Presentations from desktop to remote audience Students: Liked the convenience Liked ability to multitask Did not think learning suffered Instructors: Missed familiar sources of feedback Comfort level rose over time for 2 of 3 Overall: Lack of awareness of others a key problem

21. Telepresence: Issues Being Explored Can capture and replay telepresentations: Opportunity to integrate compression, annotation Examining mixed live/remote audience designs Enhancing sense of presence and awareness Merging real-time and asynchronous information