Digital Video Management Wiki
ACODE Project Wiki for Institutitonal Digital Video Management
Develop a brief information document modelled on the 7 Things You Should Know About... series
Table of contents
1. Briefing paper modelled on the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative's (ELI's) 7 Things You Should Know series 
Briefing paper modelled on the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative's (ELI's) 7 Things You Should Know series 
The series of briefings is based on a simple and effective format comprising an introductory scenario followed by 7 questions briefly answered with a few paragraphs each at most. The scenario helps contextualise the system or practice that is the subject of the brief and the following 7 questions are addressed from the perspective of an informed practitioner, not an IT professional.
The 7 questions used for this case study are:
- What is it?
- What technologies are involved?
- Who's doing it?
- Why is it significant?
- What are the downsides?
- Where is it going?
- What are the implications for Higher Education?
7 Things You Should Know about Managing Educational Media
- What is it? Educational Media for this purpose describes the set of digital assets, which includes but not exclusively is online video (streamed or downloadable), captured digital sequences (such as through web conferencing, twitter sequences, social media) used to support teaching and learning. Managing educational media is a series of activities around the lifecylce of planning, resourcing, creating, curating, storing and delivering media in the process of teaching and learning, including the processes of policy, governing and quality.
- What technologies are involved? For the purposes of this briefing note, the technologies used by staff and students for the creation and playback of video are excluded. They are too many and varied to mention here. Media management systems are server-based technologies, either proprietary or open source, and include the following elements
- a software application layer that operates through a web interface,
- a database server
- a transcoding server for converting source video into multiple and suitable alternative formats
- a streaming server for playing back video
These technologies work in concert to:
- accept video and audio in a range of formats,
- link metadata to the media files
- re-process submitted files to optimise for playback and publishing to other platforms (such as LMS, Youtube and iTunes U)
- store video and other media for re-discovery and re-use
- present staff with an easy-to-use interface for managing, searching and using media stored in the system
- Who's doing it? All respondents to an ACODE survey in 2013 reported they are engaged in a range of educational activities that use digital media. None of the respondents believed that the use of digital media in their institutions was decreasing and the majority believed the use of online video was on the increase. A handful of universities are in the process of testing, selecting or implementing a comprehensive media management system to meet institutional needs and simplify processes that involve digital media for students and staff.
- Why is it significant? It simplifies working with digital assets for staff and students, maximises the university's investment in the development of valuable teaching and learning assets and reduces risk around privacy, IP and copyright. It addresses a set of needs that are core to teaching and learning, including assessment, delivery through MOOCs, LMSs, and accommodating student-generated content.
Media management is growing in importance because online video is a significant teaching medium, an advertising and promotional medium, an aid to staff development and a powerful communications medium. With the advent of HTML 5, new ways of working with video are being developed, including new ways of interacting with video, commenting on video, discussing video and new forms of assesment using video. A media management system can provide the means by which an institution can put their media management policy into effect.
- What are the downsides? What to watch out for...
- Where is it going? Does anyone know?
- What are the implications for Higher Education? All good for sure.