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Digitize this!

Monday, September 28, 2009


To move their course materials online, faculty and instructors face a sometimes-bewildering array of hardware, software, conversion tools, file formats, media players, and emerging regulations. Compounding the technical hurdles is the daunting expense of the technology and staff time needed to digitize materials.

“It can be like the Wild West out there,” says Josh Harder, manager of UW-Madison’s Digital Media Center (DMC). But now, with no-cost consulting help from DMC and no-cost tools such as eTEACH, the task of digitizing course materials has become much more civilized.

“With the tools that are available on campus, you have an easy way to convert your media from start to finish,” say Harder. “You can make it accessible, put it in a media player, and publish it. You don’t have to fish around for the tools to use, format it, integrate it, etc.”

The process starts with a consultation from DMC staff. “We walk people through the steps,” explains Harder. “We don’t produce a finished product for them, because the personalized nature of the content makes that kind of handoff impossible. But we can help people incorporate videos, Web links, and documents in their online presentation.”

eTEACH has become a critical component in digitizing course materials for UW faculty and staff. This free, easy-to-use tool aggregates the output of other familiar tools such as PowerPoint to produce an online package of materials.

Improvements to eTEACH are ongoing. One successful project, described in the May 2009 Computing@UW, focused on distance education. Working with DMC consultants, Anne Pfeiffer of UW-Extension’s Agricultural Innovation Center used eTEACH to develop an online presentation providing information on better business practices to rural farmers.

Another project began as Soil Science Professor Phil Barak was converting materials for his Soils and Environmental Quality course. Impressed by the advanced accessibility options available in eTEACH, Barak worked with Harder and the DMC to enhance those options. Staff from Automatic Synch Technologies worked with Harder to create an eTEACH captioning workflow.

The result was an easy way for creating accessible, multimedia course materials. “eTEACH’s new captioning features make it simple to combine captions with audio and video files,” says Harder. “It’s so neat and transparent; you just hit the Import button.”

Captioned videos address the UW-Madison Web accessibility policy and the needs of students who are hard of hearing or have different learning styles. Perhaps the best payoff from captioning is the ability to word-search content — a benefit for all students looking for specific content.

Harder hopes that a more feature-rich eTEACH version 4.0 will debut soon. The new version will run on Windows and Macintosh desktops as client software, rather than in a Web browser as was the case in earlier versions.

For more information on eTEACH and the consultation and digital conversion services available from the Digital Media Center, go to www.doit.wisc.edu/dmc, call 265-4817, email dmc@doit.wisc.edu or visit the DMC at 425 Henry Mall, Room 3130.