Guide For COL's Classroom Capture System:
>> System Overview
>> Classroom Topology
>> Functional Topology
>> Teaching Your Course OnLine
>> Viewing Your Course OnLine
Background Information
Dr Helmut Epp, dean of the School of Computer Science, Telecommunications and Information Systems (CTI) at DePaul University, conceived and designed the COL system (patent pending) and led the system development by the Center for Applied Computer Science (CACS). The first version of Course OnLine, COL I, was introduced in the winter of 1999, and converted videotapes from distance learning classes into digital information that was then viewable via the Internet. The current version of COL, Course OnLine II (COL II), was tested in fourteen classes during the spring 2000 quarter, 63 classes that fall, and will be available for 177 classes during the winter 2003 quarter.
Dr Helmut Epp, dean of the School of Computer Science, Telecommunications and Information Systems (CTI) at DePaul University, conceived and designed the COL system (patent pending) and led the system development by the Center for Applied Computer Science (CACS). The first version of Course OnLine, COL I, was introduced in the winter of 1999, and converted videotapes from distance learning classes into digital information that was then viewable via the Internet. The current version of COL, Course OnLine II (COL II), was tested in fourteen classes during the spring 2000 quarter, 63 classes that fall, and will be available for 177 classes during the winter 2003 quarter.
CTI equipped each COL classroom with a PC, a document camera, an LCD overhead projector, and a whiteboard. COL enables students to easily view class sessions via the web from their homes, work, or the university labs. Course OnLine is intended to serve solely as a supplementary educational resource—COL should not be relied upon as a substitute for class attendance. Only students registered in a course offered in COL format may access COL for that specific course.
The capture of activities occurring in the classroom during each class session is fully automated and is transparent to the instructor and students. The COL system automatically starts and ends according to an established database that is downloaded from the University’s course schedule. At the end of the class session, COL saves a file to the local hard drive on the classroom PC and then sends that file to the designated server. Within six hours after the class session has ended, it is available automatically on the web.
For the administration of COL, CACS developed software called “Remote Admin” which supervises the COL process. This software enables the COL support team to determine whether the COL agent has started in a classroom at the beginning of the class session. In case of classroom equipment malfunctions, the capture process may be started manually.
For COL II, users were assumed to have at least a 56K modem to connect to the Internet. Currently, COL II supports only Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 and above.
Before the introduction of PeopleSoft at DePaul, the user interface checked the user ID and password via the University ID and password database to avoid any extra effort on the part of the user. Students typed in their student ID (SSN) to pass the authentication test. The COL user interface was updated to use the University’s ID system in CampusConnect. However, because CampusConnect closes at 10:00 pm each evening, COL temporarily continues to use the older SSN authentication system.