Collaboration and Education Group

Anoop Gupta Jonathan Grudin

David Bargeron Steven White

Liwei He Yong Rui

Collaboration and Education Group

Formed about 12 months ago

Mission: To explore novel technologies and applications that

enhance collaboration and education / training

Current work focuses on streaming media

Research model

Evaluation: Laboratory and Field Studies

BuildPrototype

Evaluation /Publication

RefinePrototype

ProductImpact

Focus on Communication

Effective access/use of information is key to a modern corporation (Digital Nervous System)

Much of this communication can be considered presentations, formal or informal slides and documents capture only a small part low-cost capture and on-demand availability

Relevant participants are often not collocated must create sense of presence and awareness provide interactivity across time and place

Three Issues that Frame Our Research

There are too many presentations to attend ability to time-compress talks ability to summarize talks indexes for quick search/access

Knowledge-creation does not end when the talk ends facilitating “in-context” asynchronous discussion

Talks redesigned for online and asynchronous access social implications changes in organization and presentation of talks

ProductionCost

End-UserValue

Time

Ongoing Projects

MSTE and MURL: Online Seminars

Time Compression and Skimming

MRAS: Multimedia Annotations

Flatland: Telepresentation System

MSTE Online Presentations

Logs of ~10K sessions involving over 2K users

Some results: On-demand audience about 40% of live audience 60% < 5 minutes Viewers jump around video Initial portions much more likely to be watched

Presentations will be designed differently in future Present key messages early in talk Present key messages early in slide Use meaningful slide titles Reveal talk structure in slide titles Consider post-processing talk for on-line viewers

Analysis of Online Presentation Viewing

Logs of ~10K sessions involving over 2K users

Some results: On-demand audience about 40% of live audience 60% < 5 minutes Viewers jump around video Initial portions much more likely to be watched

Presentations will be designed differently in future Present key messages early in talk Present key messages early in slide Use meaningful slide titles Reveal talk structure in slide titles Consider post-processing talk for on-line viewers

Time Compression: Synchronized Audio and Video

To preserve pitch: throw away portion of each 100ms chunk, then stitch together

Basic signal processing well known, but several systems issues

Results of lab studies: People choose ~1.4 speed, don’t adjust much They like it

“I think it will become a necessity… Once people have experienced it they will never want to go back. Makes viewing long videos much, much easier.”

Comprehension may go up

Skimming: Compression Goes Nonlinear

To beat 2x speedup, must throw away content

Sources of information audio: pauses, intonation, speech-to-text and NLP video: scene changes other: slide-changes, previous viewers’ patterns

Lab studies of 4x-5x speedup Viewers learn from automatic summaries Viewers like and learn more when author-edited

Mixed-initiative summarization is promising

Ongoing Projects

MSTE and MURL: Online Seminars

Time Compression and Skimming

MRAS: Multimedia Annotations

Flatland: Telepresentation System

Initial Lab Studies of Annotated Video

Personal note-taking (MRAS vs. Paper) ~1 note / minute in each condition positioning: none in paper; ~10-15s later in MRAS all subjects preferred MRAS (although more time),

and thought more useful for future reference

Shared notes study text preferred to audio 14/18 stated more participation than in “live” class auto-tracking particularly useful

Annotation: Field Studies & Future Work

MSTE class to use MRAS and recorded lectures Can we emulate live-classroom discussion in an

asynchronous environment using MRAS? Will people interact/learn more using MRAS rather than in

“live” classroom environments? How can we stimulate discussion / community formation

in asynchronous environments?

MS Usability Engineers: “highlights tapes” Video is now organized by annotations Email distribution, playlists become key features Possible wider use in development

Unified annotation platform architecture storage, naming, sharing, user interface

Flatland Telepresentation System

Joint project with the Virtual Worlds Group Flexible architecture for rapidly prototyping

distributed collaborative applications

Flatland

Flatland Telepresentation System

Joint project with the Virtual Worlds Group Flexible architecture for rapidly prototyping distributed

collaborative applications

Initial use in 3 multi-session MSTE classes Presentations from desktop to remote audience

Students: Liked the convenience Liked ability to multitask Did not think learning suffered

Instructors: Missed familiar sources of feedback Comfort level rose over time for 2 of 3

Overall: Lack of awareness of others a key problem

Telepresence: Issues Being Explored

Can capture and replay telepresentations: Opportunity to integrate compression, annotation

Examining mixed live/remote audience designs

Enhancing sense of presence and awareness Merging real-time and asynchronous information