Eric Dent, executive director, Dorctoral Programs, and Linda Smith, president, Smith Consulting, use the media lab to record their virtual radio show, "Leader Talk."

Faculty Media Lab Puts
Do-It-Yourself Multimedia
Within Reach

By Chip Cassano

Course developers and faculty members who wish to enrich online courses with multimedia components now have a valuable tool in UMUC's faculty media lab, located in Room 1226 of the Student and Faculty Services Center.

Patricia Hall shows off the Macintosh-based video editing system.

The media lab allows faculty members to present live or recorded Webcasts, to hold online meetings, to capture data from an interactive "white board" (a sort of electronic chalkboard), and to record audio and video presentations or conferences—either for online distribution or for publication on a CD-ROM. The lab is equipped with a high-quality scanner outfitted with an automatic sheet feeder and optical character reader; an automated CD-ROM duplicator; a DVD burner; digital video cameras and a Macintosh-based video-editing system; and more. Most importantly, the hardware and software in the lab is simple enough for it to be used by faculty members, with little or no supervision, after only limited guidance by staffers from the Center for the Virtual University.

"These are what we call low-threshold technologies, and they put people within reach of the 'low-hanging fruit' of multimedia," said Theo Stone, assistant provost and director of the Center for the Virtual University. "They offer ways of enriching online courses without too much effort."

Patricia Hall, resource coordinator for the lab, said that faculty response has been uniformly positive. "The only real complaint has been that the lab isn't open beyond normal business hours."

Now that the lab is available for use, the next challenge is keeping it current.

"We're keeping our ears and eyes open as faculty use the lab and ask for new capabilities," said Stone. "If we can't do something, we'll explore whatever it takes to get what they need. We see this as an evolving process."