ED-MEDIA 1999 Proceedings Book - Association for the ...

Synchronised Slides ’n Sounds On-line
John Rosbottom
Department of Information Systems
University of Portsmouth
Locksway Road, Portsmouth, PO4 8JF, UK
john.rosbottom@port.ac.uk
Introduction
Synchronised Slides ‘n Sounds On-line (SSSO) is an integrated multimedia/hypermedia system that
provides a distinctive new medium for teaching and learning. Students use the world wide web to
connect to an audio lecture illustrated by visual slides. Students can move backwards and forwards
through the lecture while the slides and the talk remain tightly synchronised.
The cornerstones of student learning in the late twentieth century are the lecture, the tutorial, the
practical case study and the book. One of the most important aspects of these ways to learn is that they
are all to some extent highly flexible and may be adapted to a variety of students in a variety of
situations. These approaches to learning work in a wide variety of subject areas to a wide range of
student competences. The influence of the computer as a learning aid, rather than as an administrative
aid to learning, is significantly less than the mainstays of the lecture delivered in a face to face lecture
theatre, the tutorial or seminar delivered in a small group environment, and the book. However SSSO
has something of the versatility of these more traditional learning methods.
Pedagogy
The approach to education that we are currently developing seeks to maintain a highly flexible
approach to learning by utilising a wide variety of resources and methods. To this extent it is much the
same as any standard late twentieth century university course. However whenever it is appropriate to
do so, activities are migrated to a multimedia/hypermedia environment delivered on the world wide
web. The key criterion in implementing this system is that of identifying the most appropriate way to
deliver resources and facilitate learning. What we are developing is a robust “mixed economy” of
learning. We believe the lecture is over-used. Some (but not all) of what is done in lectures can be
done better by the equivalent lecture delivered as an asynchronous multimedia lecture on the world
wide web.
There is an ideal of the lecture which is the Socratic model, or perhaps the Oxbridge model, in which
students are inculcated into a field of knowledge and understanding by gifted, charismatic individuals
able to inspire their students with a love of the subject and a thirst for learning more. On this ideal
model lectures are conducted in a face to face environment where students can interrogate the lecturer
who is sufficiently sensitive to construct responses at a level appropriate to the students’ current level
of understanding. The lecturer is able to perceive the needs of the audience and explains the subject in
such a way that they can relate their new understanding to what they already know. The reality in
modern Higher Education is that only a minority of lectures correspond to this ideal. Large student
numbers from widely heterogeneous backgrounds, and shorter teaching hours conspire to reduce many
lectures to a much more routine affair in which the lecturer addresses some slides and answers some
questions. There may be insufficient time for every question to be asked. Such a lecture pitched at the
“average student” in an audience of perhaps 150 students is likely to be beyond the comprehension of
some, and obvious to others - both of these extremes learn little from the lecture. Part of the aim of our
current work is to be able to raise the standard of face to face lectures to that of the ideal outlined
above. Our approach to achieving this is to make these face to face lectures much more of a “special
event” than the routine, same-time-same-place-every-week lecture. To achieve this elevation of
standards many of these routine lectures can be beneficially delivered as a streamed audio file with
synchronised slides illustrating the talk and an extended set of frequently asked questions associated
with the discussion of the lecture. These SSSO lectures are just one of a rich set of features which