Video in digital format played on programmable devices presents opportunities for significantly enhancing the user's viewing experience. For example, time compression and pause removal can shorten the viewing time for a video, textual and visual indices can allow personalized navigation through the content, and random-access digital storage allows instantaneous seeks into the content. To understand user behavior when such capabilities are available, we built a software video browsing application that combines many such features. We present results from a user study where users browsed video in six different categories: classroom lectures, conference presentations, entertainment shows, news, sports, and travel. Our results show that the most frequently used features were time compression, pause removal, and navigation using shot boundaries. Also, the behavior was different depending on the content type, and we present a classification. Finally, the users found the browser to be very useful. Two main reasons were: i) the ability to save time and ii) the feeling of control over what content they watched.
Problem-based learning techniques involving small collaborative teams of students are widely regarded as being effective in teaching engineering design courses. However, the heavy requirements upon the teaching staff to support and coordinate such teams typically limit these courses to small numbers of students. In this paper, we describe the design of a computer-based tool for supporting small collaborative teams with the ultimate goal of scaling these engineering design courses to larger numbers of students. The system, deployed on laptops with wireless networking, utilizes student self-evaluations and instrumented project management tools to provide feedback of individual and team performance to the students and teaching staff. We present an example of the usage and data collected from this system during a pilot test in an undergraduate computer science design course. Based on that experience, we discuss future plans to refine the system for early detection of problem teams and to instrument asynchronous and instant messaging tools to support social network analysis of team communication.
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