1. Object-Oriented Content: Importance, Benefits, and Costs Cesar Bandera Director of R&D Creneaux 145 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10013 cbandera@creneaux.com www.creneaux.com

2. Content Providers Face Growing Scalability Problems Diversity in demographics, content personalization, revenue models Distributed content management Diverse delivery, client platforms Internet, removable media, broadcast, … PCs, PDAs, kiosks/embedded devices, entertainment consoles, …

3. Object-Oriented Principles Apply to Content Content is composed of media objects Tailoring to demographics impacts few media objects, not the entire content ROI via reuse of labeled objects Delivery, interactivity @ individual objects Optimized by object type (including DRM) Conforming to different revenue models Versus “baking” into single format, location

4. Object Oriented Content Standards SCORM Courseware standard Promotes interoperability of content among different Learning Management Systems MPEG-4 Multimedia standard Promotes interoperability of content among different delivery channels and clients

5. Example of MPEG-4 Content and Delivery Benefits Objects: Chromakeyed video Slides Text Synthetic 3-D set Total: 4.7MB, 2 min 13x smaller stream than MPEG-2 @ same quality (4Mb/s) 7x smaller stream than WMv9 @ same quality (2Mb/s) Similar significant bandwidth savings over other delivery channels, narrowband and broadband

6. Example of MPEG-4 Personalization Five MPEG-4 streams: Audio: 0.99 Mbytes Video: 3.48 Mbytes Graphics: 5×0.23 Mbytes Total:5.62 Mbytes Five MPEG-2 streams: 5×61 Mbytes = 305 Mbytes Savings in size translates to savings in production and delivery expenses.

7. Similarity & Difference Between SCORM and MPEG-4 Content is a hierarchy of labeled objects Standards that define how content is delivered, not how it is created Quality set by tools, authoring practices An object (SCO) is a pedagogical unit Objects delivered sequentially An object is a media asset Tight spatiotemporal synchronization

8. Example of Tight Spatiotemporal Composition Recorded audio, pre-recorded head video, synthetic mouth video Synthetic audio, pre-recorded head video, synthetic mouth video

9. Nesting OO Architectures: Immersive Simulations Media asset < ? SCO ? < Training level Media asset has no pedagogical value Training level is too context-specific Learner is graded on end state and on intermediate state trajectory

10. OO Immersive Simulations: Milestone SCOs Decompose simulation objective into milestones One per SCO (an MPEG-4 show in a SCORM wrapper) Consistency between SCO transitions is prerequisite LMS instructs client to use initial state authored in SCO, or final state of previous SCO (cached)

11. The Beneficiaries of Object Oriented Content The consumer Greater interaction with relevant information The manager of content Interoperability and reuse New markets “Shareable content economy” E.g., Object developers, syndication New revenue models enabled by fine-grain DRM, pervasiveness of information

12. The Cost of OO Content Is Borne By The Author Context independence of objects independence = reusability But when creating a course (lecture, lab, etc.), context drives the thinking process Object labeling Which semantics? Conversion of legacy content If possible

13. Policy Required to Achieve Shareable Content Economy in Academia? Current situation: Rich media tools are difficult to use (well) IT groups creates content, consult with SME Some faculty obligated by grant Incentive? Problem: faculty not paid to create content E-learning research alone will not achieve critical mass