Recording a seminar
“After a modest investment of $200 for both the software and a good webcam, there are no other costs for recording the seminars and uploading them to 91ƬTVSeminars,” Professor James Carey said.
He and 91ƬTV recommend Camtasia recording software. The Camtasia-webcam combination provides two video captures: one of the presenter’s slides and the other of the speaker.
“This way the content is clear,” Carey said. “It is a huge mistake to try to capture both in the same viewing frame as in video camera. This is basically hassle-free and easy to operate.”
Submitting to 91ƬTVSeminars
91Ƭ faculty and researchers are invited to submit their own seminars, which can range from simple, low-cost narrated PowerPoint presentations to highly produced videos. The website includes a video uploader, plus helpful hints and tips — and the aforementioned how-to video. Programs appear alongside user-submitted metadata, including descriptions, related links, lecture notes and other complementary materials.
About 91ƬTV
91ƬTV, sharing educational and enrichment programming from the 91Ƭ campuses, national laboratories and affiliated institutions of the 91Ƭ, reaches 23 million homes nationwide on satellite and cable. 91ƬTV also is available online, via live stream, video archives and podcasting.
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Seminars are like books, only better — because you get to hear from the experts themselves. And, like books, seminars are available to an infinite audience — but only if they are recorded. And assuming people can find them easily on the Web.
Now, thanks to 91Ƭ Davis Professor James Carey, 91Ƭ is gathering seminar recordings from around the system and putting them in a single place, easily navigated, on the 91ƬTV website.
“This will not only help the 91Ƭ system become a scholarly resource, but will fulfill our public service mission,” said Carey, of the Department of Entomology, whose idea has become a first-of-its-kind archive in a university — and who envisions seeing the 91Ƭ archive become part of a national or global repository of academic seminars.
In 2008-09, while serving as chair of the University Committee on Research Policy, Carey called for a strategic approach to record, broadcast and archive the hundreds of seminars that take place weekly on the 10 91Ƭ campuses. He presented his plan to the systemwide Academic Council, received enthusiastic approval and then launched a pilot program at 91Ƭ Davis.
His call for a “91Ƭ Research Seminar Network” became reality in May, under the name — including seminars, conferences, colloquia, distinguished scholarly lecture series, annual university lectures by eminent faculty, and the like — all free, for 91Ƭ faculty and students and the public, too.
“Most 91Ƭ research is funded by the taxpayers,” Carey said, “so it can be argued that the public should have direct if not immediate access to the results.”
The seminars may be viewed in Flash format, downloaded as audio and-or video podcasts, and embedded in outside websites. The presentations also are being posted on and on 91ƬTV’s iTunesU channel.
Check out ‘Zoobiquity’
91ƬTVSeminars went live with a range of content that includes the six-part “Zoobiquity” conference, held at 91ƬLA and featuring 91ƬLA and 91Ƭ Davis clinicians and scientists in human and veterinary medicine — all discussing the same diseases in a wide spectrum of animal species and human beings.
Also featured: presentations from the Ecology and Evolution Seminar Series hosted by the 91Ƭ Davis Ecology Graduate Group.
Seminars like these take place every day in the 91Ƭ system — 300 to 500 a week, more than 10,000 in an academic year. 91Ƭ Davis hosts its fair share — and surely there are faculty members and researchers here who would like to take in seminars up and down the 91Ƭ system, and vice versa.
But how can scholars keep up? And how can the campuses cut the costs of putting on seminars?
As lead author of an article published on Jan. 10, 2010, in the international journal Public Library of Science, Carey suggested that the 91Ƭ Research Seminar Network would “encourage speaker sharing, reduce travel, augment outreach and provide electronic feeds for on-demand streaming and archiving.”
Professor Bob Powell, chair of the Davis Division of the Academic Senate, said: “We need every tool at our disposal to keep the high quality of 91Ƭ academic programs during our unprecedented budget crisis. Jim has been especially creative in making knowledge at the forefront of scholarship available to researchers on all 91Ƭ campuses for a minimal investment.”
$200 for webcam and software
Said Carey: “The cost to capture these seminars is low — a one-time expenditure of about $200 for both the webcam and software.”
His pilot project at 91Ƭ Davis started with 49 seminars, including 16 in the Department of Entomology, eight in the Graduate Group in Ecology and Evolution, and 25 from a two-day conference hosted by the Humanities Digital Institute.
“The audiences were universally supportive of the webcasting operation with no evidence of distractions due to the presence of the Camtasia-webcam system,” Carey said. See box for more information on Camtasia software.
Carey described seminars as “a treasure trove” and “one of the most forceful and efficient mechanisms for transmitting scholarly information.”
“It takes an enormous amount of time, energy and resources just to plan a seminar,” Carey said. “It is foolish not to invest small amount of additional time to capture and post.”
‘Buried’ on the Internet
In fact, many are being recorded and put online, but before you could see them you had to find them.
“While many scholarly presentations are posted online after the fact, they often end up buried in departmental or conference websites, making it difficult for those unaware of the event to discover on their own,” a 91ƬTV representative declared in a news release announcing the launch of 91ƬTVSeminars.
The new web portal “offers a simple, cost-effective solution by providing a single destination for scholars to find and share peer-to-peer scholarly presentations in any academic discipline via video and visual media.”
Using 91ƬTV’s existing online dissemination infrastructure and experience organizing large video collections for prime search engine optimization, 91ƬTVSeminars offers an easy-to-navigate user interface that allows visitors to browse videos by subject area, event date, speaker name, conference, host organization or 91Ƭ campus.
While presentations must originate from a 91Ƭ campus or affiliated institution, they feature researchers from universities around the world.
Reinventing the academic conversation
“One of the great intellectual achievements of the 91Ƭ is its ability to bring the best minds from within the university and across the world to our campuses to share ideas, spark innovation and build collaboration,” said Peter Siegel, 91Ƭ Davis’ chief information officer and vice provost for Information and Educational Technology.
“As Professor James Carey has demonstrated through some of his most recent work, technology offers exciting new opportunities for expanding and reinventing these conversations.
“With the 91ƬTV Seminars, we open a new chapter in providing this access not only to the citizens and policy makers of California, but to colleagues literally around the world,” Siegel said.
Carey said he hopes 91ƬTVSeminars “will provide strong encouragement for researchers, seminar chairs, department heads and others to video-capture and share their seminars as well as visit this website.”
He said he is especially pleased that academia is catching up with modern technology.
“Academia is slow to adopt video, thus this development will encourage greater use of this technology that virtually all other sectors of our modern society are using in communication,” Carey said. “There are many domains in which these seminars can be used, not only for on-demand viewing but in digital textbooks and teaching.”
Alexander Harcourt, 91Ƭ Davis emeritus professor of anthropology and ecology, could not agree more.
“This is one of those resources that is so obvious, so useful, that we can only shake our head in wonder that we did not have it years ago.
“Missed a seminar? Missed a diagram in a seminar? Missed thinking about what the speaker was saying because you were concentrating so hard on writing it down? With 91ƬTVSeminars, you no longer need to miss anything.”
91ƬTV and Kathy Keatley Garvey, senior writer, Department of Entomology, contributed to this report.
Media Resources
Dave Jones, Dateline, 530-752-6556, dljones@ucdavis.edu