School of Creative Technologies (CT)
Interactive Multimedia
Mission Statement:
To enhance learning experience via innovative media solutions.
Aims:
- Design and implement web based applications to support learning via multimedia technology.
- Design and implement e-commerce model for licensing streaming video files.
- Support university streaming media activities.
- Enhance quality of research in the field by recruiting PhD students.
- Bring income into the department via research grants and consultancy and make the group self-supporting.
- Link Creative Technologies with industry via Knowledge Transfer Partnership programme
List of Externally funded Projects
[1] Lifesign:
The LIFESIGN Project (www.lifesign.ac.uk) received funding from JISC to establish the feasibility of delivering streaming media to support learning in the Life Sciences. The Lifesign Site is a dynamically created database driven website consisting of high-quality video programmes for use in higher and further education (Maniar, N. & Garrison, W., 2004). This project shows that dynamically created streaming media programmes can be very effective approach to deliver online lecturers, distance-learning courses as well as embedding it with virtual learning environments like WebCT or BlackBoard. The LIFESIGN has a very useful online virtual editing tool, which enables users to downloading the URL for any video and for using the video timings to produce links to specific sections of the required video (very useful for lectures, where time may be limited). This is a significant technical breakthrough in streaming media (Lancaster, K. & Dalton, P., 2003).
Lifesign website has over 256 registered members.
Project URL: http://www.lifesign.ac.uk
Final evaluation report
[2] Nanonet:
The Nanonet Project received funding from BTG International limited and EPSRC to establish Nanotechnology Network with an overall interest in Biological Systems that might be used in Nanotechnology and, in particular, molecular machines. Part of this project was to stream the conferences videos. Nanonet project has demonstrates the use of video material as a useful resource, which can make a major contribution to research community.
NanoNet has a database of video lectures of world-renown speakers and a facility that allows online manipulation, editing and linking of a video presentation and an associated PowerPoint Presentation. This allows a speaker to produce the final version of his presentation from any internet-connected computer.
It is our belief that streaming media and related services provide a valuable contribution to the mission of the University. This contribution is evidenced by the increasing demand for streaming media, by the success of recent bids such as JISC, EPSRC, FDTL5 and CETL that incorporate streaming media, and by the success of the Lifesign and Nanonet Project. Our objective is to meet this growing demand and to provide new, transparent ways for academic market to benefit from these technologies.
At present Nanonet has over 250 registered members.
[3] Industrial Economics:
Industrial Economics is an on-going collaborative project with Portsmouth Business School.
[4] MathCentre:
MathCentre is an on-going collaborative project between The Educational broadcast trust (EBS), and Loughborough University.
The Interactive Media Group is providing hosting services and consultancy for online delivery.
Project URL: http://www.mathcentre.co.uk/
[5] Mathematics for Economics: enhancing Teaching and Learning (METAL)
METAL is an FDTL-5 funded project to enhance the learning of mathematics for students of Economics. It is a collaborative project including Nottingham Trent University, University of Portsmouth and Brunel University. Streaming media support is provided by the Interactive Media Research Group.
[6] Streaming Media Portal
Streaming Media Portal is a ExPERT centre funded project.
“Streaming Media Portal”, which will allow staff to perform online manipulation of video lectures streamed via Internet (including editing, producing clips and arranging them in any order), synchronisation of PowerPoint Presentations with the video and incorporate images, word, pdf or web documents as additional information where needed to support the students’ comprehension of a specific topic.
[7] Podcasting
URL: http://podcast.port.ac.uk/
[8] Live Broadcasting
URL: mms://148.197.145.52/braodcast (restricted access - University intranet)
List of Publications
The results of our work via international publications and extensive case studies have been recognised nationally and received favourable comments. List of publications as follows:
[1] Garrison, W. (1999)
Streams are Made Of This
Viewfinder, British University Film and Video Council, 37, 16-18.
[2] Garrison, W. (2000)
Streaming Video Over the Internet
Health Information on the Internet, Royal Society of Medicine, 13, 1-2
[3] Garrison, W. (2000)
We Stream But Do They Watch?
Viewfinder, British University Film and Video Council, 41, 13-14.
[4] Garrison, W. (2001)
Streaming into the Mainstream
Journal of Audiovisual Media in Medicine, 24/4.
[5] Garrison, W. (2004)
Lifesign: Making popular television work for online learning
LTSN01 Journal, 10/04
[6] Maniar N, Rosbottom J (2004)
Streaming Media – How is it changing education?
KDU Symposium on IT in Education, 2004, Malaysia
[7] Maniar N, Garrison W (2004)
Dynamic Streaming Media - Creating Custom Programmes in Real-time
ACE'04, June 3-5, 2004, Singapore ACM 1-58113-882
[8] Maniar N, Garrison W (2004)
New Dynamics in Streaming Media
DIVERSE 2004, INHOLLAND University, Amsterdam
[9] Maniar N (2005)
Video-Streaming oriented teaching aids
University of Portsmouth, Teaching and Learning Conference, June 2005, United Kingdom
[10] Maniar N, Garrison W (2006) (Under review)
Streaming Media Portal
DIVERSE 2006, Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland.
Conference Papers
Streams of Change - Scaling up, ALT-C 2001, Edinburgh, a presentation on the challenges of delivering streaming media to thousands of simultaneous users in HE.
Learning Streams, First DIVERSE International Conference on Video and Videoconferencing in Further and Higher Education, University of Derby July, 2001
Contact
Nipan J Maniar BSc(Maths) MSc(Multimedia) PgC(LTHE) ILT
Senior Lecturer in streaming media technologies
Interactive Media Research Group
University of Portsmouth
Department of Creative Technologies
0.19 Buckingham Building
Portsmouth PO1 3HE
Tel: +44 (0)23 9284 6462
Fax: +44 (0)23 9284 6350