The Instructional Media Center in the Lincoln University Library

by Sam Schnieders
MC Journal: The Journal of Academic Media Librarianship, v5#1, Summer 1997:1-9.

The Instructional Media Center (IMC) is located on the ground floor of the new Lincoln University Library. It is designed to provide multimedia and distance learning opportunities to faculty, staff and students both on and off campus. The idea for building a new library to include the Instructional Media Center was conceived nearly six years ago. Previously, the library functioned in an older, somewhat dilapidated building named after Inman E. Page. The IMC was in a separate building, Martin Luther King Hall. The dream for the new library became reality at this historically black 1890 land grant institution in January, 1997.

A typical day in the busy Instructional Media Center might begin in the Teleconference Center. A 12x12 electric screen comes to a stop in the front of the room as an instructor approaches the podium. With the turn of a key, he powers up a video projector, which is perched in the elevated projection room about 50 feet away. He is presenting from a laptop computer using Powerpoint software. He also has some pages of text which he will project through the document camera to his left. Included on the podium are a videotape deck, CD\cassette player, laserdisk player and sound system. Towards the end of his presentation, he will show a 10 minute video clip of an interview recorded this past week in the IMC. He considered digitizing the clip and bringing it into his presentation through a software program called Multimedia Toolbook, but elected to stay with Powerpoint and videotape. With the coming affordability of MPEG2 compression and DVD technology, this will no doubt change.

In addition to classroom presentations, there is a distance learning component built into the room. The system consists of three wall-mounted and remotely controlled 3 chip cameras which feed to an MX-50 switcher. Video feeds from the switcher go to the S-VHS record deck, the video/data projector, and a Radiance Codec unit which is used for transmitting video over a T1 line to the Missouri State Video Network. This two way video capability will hopefully result in collaboration and partnering between Lincoln and other colleges and universities.

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There will also be a link between the center and the campus public access television station so that programs can be aired "live" through local cable. If the university decides to uplink a program, arrangements will be made with the State Dept. of Education to use their uplink facilities. Programs will actually be produced on location, in the teleconference center, or at the State Department's own studio. There are two satellite feeds into the center which are controlled through a modem and software program provided by Chaparral. The satellite receivers remain at the former IMC location in MLK Hall and feed four rooms in that building. The Teleconference Center, Multimedia Presentation Rooms, and twelve Group Study Rooms are also linked to the receiver. The computer control of these receivers has generated interest among the administration to control four other campus satellite dishes from the IMC as well. Two of these dishes are seldom used, enforcing the idea that more centralized control would ensure better access. The Digital Darkroom While the teacher in the Teleconference Center is making his Powerpoint presentation, a call comes to the IMC from a staff member in the Ethnic Studies Center. She is requesting that twelve 8x10 black and white photos be copied and reproduced as 16x20 dry mounted prints to be used in a campus display. When the photos are sent to us, it becomes obvious that many of them need to be restored. Student assistants are given the assignment of scanning the prints into Photoshop so they can be manipulated at a later time. Once the prints are corrected, they will be saved on a Zip Drive, then sent to a professional lab in nearby Columbia, Mo. Here they are output to 4x5 film and sent back to the IMC. The darkroom will be used at this point to print the 4x5 negatives as 16x20 images on fiber-based paper for archival purposes before dry mounting.

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The President's Office calls requesting photos of a press conference in the Board Room. They want the pictures to be in the upcoming newsletter requiring an immediate turnaround time. A student assistant takes the photos on a DC-50 Kodak digital camera, brings the digital image into Photoshop, makes a few adjustments, then outputs to a Fuji printer which produces a 3x5 color print. This digital darkroom approach is used when a fast turnaround time or photograph manipulation is required. The Multimedia Production Lab Working on a multimedia project depicting the life and works of an Ozark poet, an English teacher creates both a classroom presentation, and an interactive version for individual study using Multimedia Toolbook. The biographical introduction contains "hotwords" which are linked to photographs and short video clips. The heart of the program, however, consists of a sequence of poems, many of which are read by the poet himself. Since the thrust of the multimedia program is geared towards having the students associate language with imagery, many of the hotwords in the poems trigger photographs. This interactive version will be mastered on a CD-ROM using a Yamaha 100 CDR machine. Another instructor from the Education Department is using a software program called Podium to design a presentation on discipline in the classroom. The teacher is using clips from several movies on laserdisk to enhance the lecture. Podium allows the instructor to identify clips with pinpoint accuracy using a Pioneer 8000 player before linking those clips to text or graphics within the program. Many of the teachers prefer using the laserdisks if possible because of their high quality video. Science students from a local high school arrive at the front desk. They had previously talked to the IMC director about having their Powerpoint screens printed out as slides. The IMC has a Mirus Film Printer for doing this. It is connected to a Pentium and Macintosh computer. The slides can be developed at a local business in one hour. The students have also asked that some of the screens be output to color prints and dry mounted for display purposes. This will be done on a Lexmark inkjet printer.

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All of the machines in the Multimedia Production Lab are loaded with Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, Multimedia Toolbook, and Podium. Programs which are developed here can be downloaded to laptop computers which can then be transported on and off campus for presentations. Each of the six stations has a Pentium 166 with 32mg of RAM and a 2.5 GB. hard drive. All have sound cards, speakers, and a Intel Smart Video Recorder video capture card. Still Videotapes After All These Years The choir director just arrived at the IMC. A few weeks ago the staff videotaped his Messiah concert. Twenty participants have requested a copy of the performance. With the one to five videotape dubbing equipment, the tapes will be ready in a few days. Two copies need to be sent overseas, so a universal videotape deck will be used to record these in the PAL format. The IMC receives videotape dubbing requests from international students and faculty traveling abroad. This particular piece of equipment has become a valuable asset to the department. The IMC is responsible for photographing and videotaping any campus event which falls into the categories of academic support or archives. Student assistants normally handle the field work and post production work for these projects. These assignments are mastered on S-VHS tape and edited on an S-VHS cuts-only system. When more extravagant post production work is required (e.g. campus promotional videos, or programs to be aired over our campus access channel), a Pinnacle Aladdin system is used. In the near future, the IMC plans on acquiring an Avid, non-linear editing system. The center is continuously building its 1200 + video collection through its Library Liaison Committee which solicits requests from faculty and staff on a monthly basis. As videos become available on DVD, they will be purchased when possible.

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The Multimedia Presentation Rooms

The partition between the first and second Multimedia Presentation Rooms is pushed back to accommodate a Business class with 38 students. A IMC staff person is scheduled to teach these students how to use Powerpoint. An oral presentation which students are required to give later in the semester will require a laptop presentation using this software program. Today's session will simply introduce them to the program, but two additional sessions will be scheduled for each half of the group in the Multimedia Teaching Lab just down the hall. This lab is comprised of 20 Pentium workstations with programs such as Powerpoint and Multimedia Toolbook installed. Once the hands-on training sessions are completed, it will be up to each student to schedule time in which to develop the presentation. The multimedia presentation rooms will then be rescheduled by the instructor for the student projects.

The podiums in these two rooms are identical to the one provided in the teleconference room. The presenter can choose from many video inputs (videotape, laserdisk, document camera) in addition to the computer input. All of the peripherals feed into the data/video projectors which is suspended from the ceiling. As in the teleconference room, a key powers all the equipment on the podiums and the video projectors in five second increments. IMC staff usually power the units up in the morning and leave them on throughout the day.

Administrative staff begin to arrive in the Videoconferencing Room. They have scheduled interviews via two way video with university presidential candidates from Pittsburgh and Detroit. The seven individuals on the presidential search committee will use a roll-around Radiance Codec unit to conduct the interviews. At this point the signal is transmitted over a dedicated T1 line to the University of Missouri through the Missouri State Video Network. From this point, UMC dials in to the remote site. One of the key factors which influenced the decision to go with the dedicated line was the fact that this area does not have access to ISDN technology.

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The Group Study Rooms

In one of the twelve group study rooms, a faculty member from the Art Dept. is previewing slides for Art History. She will use this traditional format for the following reasons: 1) many of the images are still not available commercially on CD-ROM; and 2) her room is not equipped with the appropriate instructional technology for presenting from a laptop computer. As more rooms are equipped through the campus master plan, she may elect to create her own CD-ROM using the IMC's slide scanner and CD recorder.

In another room a group of Humanities students are watching a lecture which was recorded previously by an IMC student assistant. The Humanities class, which includes about 200 students, meets twice weekly and is always videotaped. This gives students a second chance to view the tape and have some discussion. Invariably, one of the faculty who team teach the class, will be on hand to help facilitate these discussions. Two of the group study rooms are reserved each week for this purpose.

An Education student and her supervising teacher, are watching and evaluating one of the student's classroom presentations to a group of second graders. As part of their evaluation, student teachers are responsible for having their sessions videotaped. Later on in the semester, the IMC will work with the department in assembling tapes which depict various teaching situations. These tapes can be used as a stand alone resource to address such issues as teacher preparation, and discipline in the classroom. They may also be integrated into multimedia programs in both the presentation and interactive modes.

Each of the twelve rooms is equipped with a wall mounted TV/VCR combo and a CD/cassette combo. The rooms will eventually have satellite feeds which will be particularly helpful for many of the foreign language students who often times watch Spanish and French stations.

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Working Together

Multimedia projects are often collaborative efforts among many campus departments. An example is the development of a program on Edsel Ford, an Arkansas poet. A writing instructor first becomes interested in the poetry when he comes across one of the author's collected works in the library. Discovering that Ford grew up in Arkansas, the instructor asks a Reference Librarian to contact the University of Arkansas Library, which houses a rich collection of Ford's work along with many photographs, essays, and other memorabilia.

The writing instructor meets with the Media Center Director to see about the use of multimedia in teaching Ford's works. The IMC already has many slides and black and white photographs on file which depict rural life in Missouri - many of which can be matched with Ford's poetry. Within the Dept. of Communications, a photojournalism instructor has made an assignment which requires the students to submit photographs pertaining to faces and places. This instructor is very willing to let the writing instructor peruse these photographs so that some of these can be used in the Ford project as well.

Meanwhile, the Reference Librarian contacts the poet's sister who is still living in Arkansas. She is gracious enough to send more photographs which Edsel Ford had taken. IMC staff make slides and black and white negatives of these photos and transfer them to S-VHS tape. They will round out those photos needed to accompany the poems as well as providing more images for the video production.

The poet's sister is interested in doing a video interview. This footage is used in both the multimedia and videotape production. The issue of soundtracks arises. A broadcast journalism student narrates the video based on the script written by the writing instructor, and the instrumental music is acquired from an Ozark musician who happens to be a Lincoln University graduate.

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The multimedia and videotape production of Edsel Ford thus becomes a concerted effort involving Fine Arts, English, Communications, the Library and the IMC. The final product is aired on the public access channel, and in English and History classes. It is also available in the multimedia presentation mode, as a CD-ROM for interactive purposes, and as a videotape. Some of the images are also used in a traditional slide show, and from a photo CD.

Since one of the strategic issues in the five year campus plan calls for the infusion of multimedia and distance learning technologies into the curriculum, it is essential that the IMC be poised to facilitate this process. Because the IMC is strategically located within the hub of information technology - the library - it is in a perfect position. The IMC, within the library, certainly goes a long way to integrate technology into the educational process, and the administration realizes this is only the beginning. The campus master plan includes the equipping of all frequently used classrooms with permanent, instructional technology. It also calls for the establishment of multimedia production labs in buildings other than the library so faculty, staff and students will have easy access to them. All buildings on campus will be linked through fiber optic cabling, and copper wiring within the next year, ensuring access to networks, or a video distribution center from anywhere on campus. The idea of having a campus closed circuit cable television system is gaining attention. In addition to the purchased programming from the satellite receivers, certain channels would be designated for pre-recorded media such as videotape and laserdisk, and local programming such as speakers, plays, and other special events. The accelerated interest in this type of system is in large part due to the escalation of local cable rates. The IMC is taking a close look at acquiring an AMX system for this purpose.

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The key for Lincoln University will be to use technology to "showcase" its rich, African American resources. Distance learning opportunities associated with two-way video, satellite uplinking, a World Wide Web presence, and Public Access Radio and Television, will enable the university to establish its unique "personality" as an 1890 land grant institution and historically black university. Through its Black History archives in the Ethnic Studies Center to its many outstanding scholars in the field, the university can build a distinct advantage among the other historically black colleges and universities nationwide. Continuing to build on this foundation, it will rely on technology to make information accessible and keep the processes of teaching and learning innovative.

This article is copyright (c) Sam Schnieders. All Rights Reserved. All commercial use requires the permission of the author and the editors of this journal.

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