1998 Authoring and Production Tools

(Geoffrey Fox Chair of May 6 ASC Working Group)

  1. System Issues

    2. Overall system issues -- such as relative role of synchronous and asynchronous training impact all the areas in the report. Further delivery and authoring are linked in that some authoring approaches are more suitable for particular delivery mechanisms. For instance, generic authoring (such as HTML or PowerPoint) is a lot easier to integrate into systems like Tango than customized material such as the Virtual Workshop. (Although the latter is possible to integrate into Tango)

  2. Authoring Approaches

We identified 4 distinct approaches, which have different tradeoffs in terms of cost of preparation and curricula quality (learning value).
  1. "Low-end" typified by simple HTML and PowerPoint. Of course hand written notes and postscript are even less sophisticated but these are getting less important.
  2. "Enhanced Low-end" typified by audio or video over web pages. There was substantial discussion as to the need for editing of this "voice/video" augmentation. This can be quite rough if recorded on the fly from a typical harried lecturer. Editing was typically viewed as helpful but quite expensive in people time.
  3. "Medium End" such as the Virtual Workshop where one provides overview material (as in traditional foils) as well as more detailed information. The former is used when you lecture and the asynchronous learner uses the details. Note that b) can be viewed as a pragmatic way of capturing details from the busy lecturer who does not have the time to carefully prepare written material.
  4. "High End" such as the classic Multimedia CDROM prepared by sophisticated authoring tools such as Macromedia Director and with possibly professionally produced videos.

We suggest that all approaches are valid and should be considered by the PET program. A careful assessment effort would be helpful to delineate the relative value of these four methods and so motivate the extra cost as one moves down the list. We recommend that consideration be given by the 4 MSRC's to pooling resources to develop the higher end approaches for common courses (such as "MPI for the Vector Supercomputer User") where the material is relatively clear (and unchanging) and of importance to many DoD users.

  1. Standards

We recommend development of guidelines and presentation templates, which would not be enforced, but a helpful default for the lecturer without particular prejudices or expertise. Guidelines for PowerPoint include minimum font sizes, use of outline where possible and provision of titles for all foils. Other guidelines could include recommendations for preparing mathematical equations, which are not supported as well by Html and PowerPoint as by the older and less Web elegant Latex.

We note that one could provide a set by useful Web accessible services, which did various useful general functions -- such as

  1. Converting MPEG digital video to H263 format
  2. Activating URL's in plain text; linking HTML to a PET wide (and perhaps CTA specific) glossary
  3. Generation of indices to time stamped video and web pages (with this server also providing time stamping services)
  4. Conversion of text to audio and audio to text for better as well as universal access.

These services could be provided on one or more Web Servers.