CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT:

Case Western Reserve University

CASE Students Customize Their Learning Experience with Apreso

As a longtime Anystream customer, Mike Kubit, assistant director of instructional technology and academic computing at Case Western Reserve University was among the first to trial Apreso Classroom in late 2004. After a semester of use, Kubit presented Apreso to the CASE School of Medicine as a replacement for a failing lecture capture product it purchased for first and second year medical students.

"The day after being given command of the School of Medicine project, we demonstrated Apreso and automatically captured three hours of content. We haven't looked back since," said Kubit.

In August 2005 Kubit deployed Apreso Classroom to rave reviews at CASE School of Medicine. The technology was quickly adopted and within the first academic year had captured more than 1,600 hours of content via four Apreso Classroom units.

"The students absolutely love Apreso Classroom and it has worked quite well," said Kubit. "I can count on one hand how many problems we have had with the system."

While researching additional ways to apply Apreso, Kubit found that some lab-based courses were offered at 50 minute segments but often pre-lab instructions would consume a majority of the time. Upon hearing this, Kubit proposed that his team create previews for labs so that students could watch their instruction prior to coming to class.

"The response has been overwhelming. Now students can spend their entire 50 minutes completing the lab as opposed to wasting class time in preparation for the lab," said Kubit. "Students are thrilled!"

For medical students balancing rounds, didactic course delivery and studying for exams and boards, time is a limited resource. Using Apreso, time-strapped students can change the speed at which they review lectures, enabling them to learn at their own pace.

"Apreso Classroom lets students customize their learning experience," said Kubit. "We have found that our busy medical students save time by increasing the pace of lecture playback almost twofold, while our international students are able to better comprehend course content by rewinding and replaying a particularly challenging section of the presentation."

Click here to download the PDF version of the CWRU story.

EXECUTIVE MESSAGE:

Welcome to Verbatim!

Welcome to the premier issue of Anystream's Apreso newsletter: Verbatim.  We launched Verbatim to serve as a tool to support your lecture capture initiatives with information, best practices, tips, techniques and case studies. We hope that the information published in this newsletter will help you better utilize your Apreso deployment, get to know the Apreso team and learn how your colleagues are successfully employing lecture capture technology at their institutions.

Each issue of Verbatim will include a direct link to the Apreso Honors Program where you can take advantage of our press release and case study programs, student usage surveys, speaker's program, and product pilots. The Apreso Honors Program is great way to gather student feedback, create some buzz for your institution's initiatives, and even earn a free system.

Because your feedback is essential to the success of Verbatim we encourage you to submit topics and ideas that you would like to see addressed in future issues.

Wishing you happy holidays and a wonderful and prosperous 2007 from the entire Apreso team,

Mark Jones
Vice President/General Manager, Apreso Products

MEET THE TEAM:

Wes Barnes

Full name: Wes Barnes
Title: Sales Engineer
Hometown: Vienna, VA
Birthday: August 9

Job Experience:

I started at Anystream over six years ago as the network administrator designing and implementing the IT infrastructure for Anystream. I gravitated to sales and marketing by providing support for tradeshows and sales activities. Becoming an Apreso Sales Engineer was a natural progression allowing me to combine IT and sales/marketing skills.

If you could go back in time and use Apreso in only one class, what class would it be?

I would capture my statistics class at George Mason. I was constantly trying to write down equations and work out the math, rather than understanding the concept. Apreso would have helped me focus on the instructor and material rather struggling to write down the equations.

Favorite Food:

Toss up between Mexican and Italian. How can I choose?

If computers were never invented, what would you be doing now?

I would be making coffee at Starbucks as a barista - there is nothing better than being the guy that gives a customer their daily jolt of caffeine to get their day started!

What is the craziest thing you've ever done?

Jumped out of a perfectly good airplane from 12,000 feet in Las Vegas...

If you were a crayon, what color would you be? Why?

Out of the 72 Crayon box, I'd go with a color added in 1993: Mauvelous. The reason is self explanatory.

TECH TIPS:

Scene-Based Navigation Explained: How Apreso Automates Index Point Creation

There seems to be some misunderstanding about how Apreso creates index points for presentations. This is increasingly important for enhanced podcast captures because the embedded images are captured simultaneously with the thumbnails in the web playback.

There are two primary methods for automatic index creation: the first is based on scene change detection and the second is based upon defined time intervals. Apreso blends these methods — balancing the need to create an index point often enough so the user can easily navigate to the desired content, but not so frequently that searching the index points become unwieldy. The process that Apreso uses is described here:

1. An initial index point and thumbnail is created;
2. The "must wait" timer counts up to a configurable amount of time. The system default is one minute. During that time, a new index point will not be created;
3. After the "must wait" timer expires, a "max wait" timer counts up to a configurable amount of time. The system default is five minutes. Apreso's scene change detection algorithm monitors the VGA content being captured, looking for a configurable amount of frame-to-frame change. The system pre-set is 20% of the pixels;
4. If the scene change detection recognizes enough change in the VGA signal, then an index point and associated thumbnail is created, and the process returns to step two;
5. If a new index point hasn't been created and the "max wait" timer expires, an index point and associated thumbnail is created, and the process returns to step two.

KNOW AND TELL:

Case Western and Cleveland, Ohio

2 Months, 5 days, and 16 hours - The amount of time it would take a student to watch all Apreso lecture content captured by Case School of Medicine in the Fall 2005 semester.

In Cleveland, Ohio, it's illegal to catch a mouse without a hunting license.

A-...The Village of Cleaveland was incorporated on December 23, 1814. The spelling of the city's name was later changed to "Cleveland" when, in 1831, an "a" was dropped so the name could fit a newspaper's masthead.

What are Greenies? Case Western Reserve University's fleet of shuttle buses for on and near-campus transportation.

Cleveland, Ohio is home to America's first traffic light. The idea was borrowed from the French "war light", whose green, red, and yellow signals told French citizens whether to flee, surrender, or collaborate.