Delft University of Technology flips the classroom for good

Delft University of Technology flips the classroom for good posted: 24/11/2017

Delft University of Technology is known in the Netherlands for its high standard of engineering education. Now, due to the school's technical expertise of online video education, TU Delft's reputation has grown to a global platform. Today, it not only shares similarities with leading universities like MIT, Harvard and Berkeley, but also serves as an example for other schools when producing their own online courses.

QUALITY EDUCATION

Early on, around the year 2000, we saw how the internet could be used for education, and we began building small sets and mobile studios to create lessons for online delivery, says Jan Douma, AV Systems Engineer for the university's NewMedia Centre. It was a bold move, but within years a new phenomenon called MOOCs gained momentum and TU Delft was already prepared.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are freely accessible video courses online. With its open nature, popular MOOC platforms offer lessons for hobbyists, skills building, professional development or standalone academic topics.

At TU Delft, the MOOCs follow formal curriculums that correlate with the courses offered to students enrolled in a degree program. We had to create a system for production that would match the quality of education TU Delft is known for in the classroom, says Douma. This involved addressing three major factors:

First, how to accelerate the video production process to meet the booming demand for MOOCs.

Second, how to give instructors (people trained in academics, not video) the tools and the confidence to deliver high-quality online instruction.

Finally, how to create engaging content that would keep students watching and learning.

Delft University of Technology used a mix of technology, in-house development, and media expertise to design and build a production studio from scratch. This resulted in innovative video workflows that solved all three issues.

RULES FOR POST PRODUCTION

Whats interesting about TU Delft is that they have a firm rule about producing online lessons, says Arnout van der Hoek, workflow consultant with Lines Broadcast BV, NewTek reseller in the Netherlands. It's a simple rule: We do not do postproduction.'

However, this wasn't always the case. In the beginning, we did all our video production the standard way; recording with a camera, doing multiple takes to get enough coverage, and then taking that footage and doing everything in post-production, says TU Delft's Douma. It was very time consuming.

Douma and his colleague Ruud van Zijl, devised a workflow that would allow them to produce complete lessons without any postproduction and built a studio to accommodate this.

At the heart of the studio is the NewTek TriCaster 8000, with three JVC-Gy-850 cameras and other sources connected to it. Because our productions are done in real time, we chose the TriCaster because it can simultaneously handle all the video sources we could use, says Douma. The advantage is that you get the continuity of lighting, position, and coordination when you switch camera angles live, so the quality is consistently the same . This means that the production team don't have the challenge of cutting together different takes in postproduction that may not match up.

That's the key to how the TriCaster works, says van der Hoek. You dont need postproduction because you make a polished, finished presentation in real time.

PRODUCTIVITY STREAMLINED

Switching the production model to real-time has changed the game for TU Delft as it now has the ability to produce entire courses in less time. When we first started, one week's worth of lessons for a MOOC - seven clips, with a recording session for each lesson, postproduction, formatting, and uploading to YouTube - took us two weeks to complete, says Douma. With the TriCaster workflow, we can do the same amount in about two hours.

The dramatic boost in production was unheard of in educational networks. At some universities, producing a single MOOC series can take about 6 months with a large crew, says Douma. With our TriCaster workflow, in the last four years, with 4 or 5 people, we've completed 60 MOOCs, 45 blended learning projects and 25 professional courses. Thats about 5,400 videos in four years.

This level of productivity has captured the interest of the other partner universities during a conference at TU Delft, some of whom have since adopted similar real-time practices after exploring the NewMedia Centre facilities.

DONE YOUR WAY

Depending on the instructors' abilities, the NewMedia Centre has developed a tiered production model. There are three levels of service - you do it yourself; we do it with you; or we do it for you.

The more advanced main studio which is built around the TriCaster 8000 caters to the done with you and done for you models.

For lecturers who opt for the self-service model, Douma and his colleagues designed and built an in-house studio around a simpler TriCaster 410 workflow. The team have custom-developed interfaces using TriCaster SDKs and programming to provide automation control options that allow instructors to run their own shows in real-time.

Its built like a giant green-screen photo booth, van der Hoek says. Teachers who use this option can step into the studio, easily load their presentation, choose a background, and enter or import teleprompter text. They then add markers that indicate video switching decisions: when they want the program to display the full-screen PowerPoint, when they want the PowerPoint and the teacher in the same frame, or when only the teacher should appear. Then the studio lights go on automatically.

TRAINING THE TRAINER

When instructors come to the NewMedia Centre with the intention of making a

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