TIF DI4 Grant Report

Information Technology Services

Information Technology Services Activities

Information Technology Services (ITS) participated in the TIF Di4 Discovery Grant through the acquisition and installation of infrastructure hardware and software, digital content development, and assessment of existing digital content. Each of these areas is described in detail below.

Hardware Acquisition

ITS acquired slightly more than $400,000 of hardware in the DI4 grant. This included:

• Network infrastructure
• Windows Media Server
• Macintosh QuickTime servers
• Database and Cold Fusion servers
• Real Networks Helix server

Network Infrastructure

ITS spent $415,000, approximately $350,000 of it from the TIF grant, on equipment to replace UT Austins's border router with a Cisco GSR 12008 and also upgraded the connection to our Pickle Research Campus (PRC). These were installed in summer 2001.

The previous border router (Cisco 7513) was over four years old at the time and could not handle the offered load. Since installed, traffic through the new border router has increased ~200%. That is ~200% more traffic than the old router could process.

The upgraded network hardware increased the data connectivity from the main campus to PRC from a single 155Mbps connection to dual 1Gbps connections. This has been used by places like the Texas Advanced Computing Center and the Center for Space Research.

Windows Media Server

ITS purchased a Dell 2400 Server to act as a Windows Media server for campus. This server, installed in Summer 2002, supports streaming of archived Windows Media files. Windows Media format is one of the three popular streaming media formats in use on the Web today.

Macintosh QuickTime Servers

ITS purchased two development/testing Macintosh QuickTime streaming servers to experiment with the QuickTime format and also serve in the production of video content.

Database and Cold Fusion Server

ITS purchased a production and development SQL server and a production Cold Fusion server to host digital media collections and also to assist in measurement and assessment of existing resources by providing a database back-end. A prototype digital media repository was developed using the new database and Cold Fusion servers. The Digital Media Collection contains over 200 images, video clips, and audio clips and is visited by approximately 150 users a week.

In addition to the Digital Media Collection, the database and Cold Fusion servers were useful in gathering assessment data on pre-existing e-learning materials. See the section below for a complete description of assessment activities.

RealMedia Server

ITS required a Sun server (approximately $20,000) to act as a Helix streaming media server. Helix is server software from Real Networks that can serve the three most popular media formats, RealMedia, QuickTime, and Windows Media. This server enables consolidated serving of the three most popular streaming media formats, which allows for fewer servers and better management of users and disk storage.

The Helix server went into production in Spring 2003 and has already served thousands of users.

Software

In addition to the network and server infrastructure described above, ITS also purchased digital media production software to assist in the production of e-learning materials. Software purchased includes:

• Final Cut Pro
• Media Cleaner Pro
• Camtasia screen capture and editing software
• SofTV.net presentation software

These tools were used in the production of the digital content described in the next section.

Content

ITS contributed over 240 staff hours in the development of digital content. This content is largely in the form of short tutorials and intros to basic computing topics at The University of Texas at Austin. While the main audience of many of these tutorials is university students, faculty, and staff, literally thousands of people from around the world use some of this digital content on a weekly basis.

• Webspace Introductions (prepared using Camtasia)
  1. Introduction to Webspace
  2. Publishing a Web Site in Webspace
  3. Creating a Ticket in Webspace
  4. Sharing Files in Webspace
• Introduction to Flash (prepared using Camtasia)
1. Interface
2. Buttons
3. Colors
4. Layers
5. Symbols
• Dreamweaver (RealMedia format)
• Accessibility (Flash format)
• Microsoft Access, in conjunction with the Center for Instructional Technologies (CIT)

More content has been developed including an orientation video for incoming freshmen, currently in production. There are plans to continue more content development using Camtasia to illustrate concepts or techniques that lend themselves to a more visual presentation.

Assessment

We are currently in the process of assessing the usefulness of all of the content produced during the grant term. Some assessment was done of produced materials and more assessment was done of some existing e-learning materials.

ITS has maintained a collection of Web publishing materials referred to as Learning to Publish. This Web site has tutorials and introductions to Web technologies ranging from introductory HTML to Flash to CGI programming and PHP. These tutorials are used by thousands of people every year. We have known for some time how many people visit the site and use the tutorials, but we had no idea whether they thought the content was useful.

In January 2002, a simple rating scale was developed and applied to many of the tutorials. At the bottom of the pages users are asked whether the content was useful to them. Over a year we gathered this data and prepared a summary report of the usefulness of some of the more popular tutorials in Learning to Publish. From feedback and usefulness rating we learned two things:

1. Many people find tutorials via a Web search and their expectations on what they expect on the page vary greatly. This is analogous to someone searching a schedule of courses for the word algebra, finding an introductory algebra course, and then being disappointed because it did not address their advanced linear algebra needs. This is an increasing challenge as more content is discovered through other means.
2. Certain tutorials that are application-specific and are heavily dependent on a graphical user interface, Flash for example, can be improved by the inclusion of short videos (done with Camtasia) to illustrate the points. Work has begun in this area by creating some short Flash videos (see examples above).