Technology
CPA's Previews goes online, features podcasts
PreViews has undergone quite an evolution since its debut several decades ago as the newsletter for the Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State. But the publication, which morphed from a black-and-white handout to a full-color tabloid-sized newsletter, has this year experienced its most dramatic makeover. In October 2006, PreViews became a monthly (fall through spring) online multimedia magazine featuring audio and video podcasts, music downloads, and links to additional information and resources.
“By making PreViews an online publication, we’re able to reach a wider audience in a more timely fashion,” says Laura Sullivan, Center for the Performing Arts director of marketing and communications. “We still offer in-depth coverage of future events, but in a way that’s more user-friendly for the 21st century.”
Prior to the online conversion, PreViews had been published quarterly and mailed primarily to about 1,200 Center for the Performing Arts members, sponsors and series subscribers. The newsletter had also been distributed to the public at Eisenhower and Schwab auditoriums, plus other selected locations on the University Park campus and in the State College area.
Now, when each issue of PreViews goes online at www.cpa.psu.edu/previews around the tenth of the month before the issue date, almost 6,000 subscribers to the center’s free Arts Insider listserve find out immediately. One click from their e-mail and listserve recipients are at PreViews’ front page (printer-friendly formats of all articles are available on the Web site). People may also subscribe to PreViews through the Podcasts at Penn State Web site at http://podcasts.psu.edu.
PreViews’ podcast content varies and has included interviews with artists (such as Classical Savion star Savion Glover and The Chieftains founder Paddy Moloney), musical selections and video highlights. People can listen to or watch the podcasts on the PreViews site—part of the center’s main Web site at www.cpa.psu.edu—or download and check them out later on a personal computer or MP3 player. “We have found the artists to be very willing to work with us on this project. The podcasts definitely add a dimension that is impossible to achieve in a printed publication,” says Sullivan, noting PreViews is produced entirely in-house with very little equipment, no recording studio and no expensive software.
Erik Baxter, the center’s multimedia specialist and PreViews designer, creates most of the podcasts using GarageBand software and rights-secured audio and video samples provided by the artists. Interview podcasts come from phone conversations that PreViews Editor John Rafacz has with artists. Rafacz, who has written and edited PreViews since 1991, records the interviews digitally using Skype and CallRecorder software. Baxter and Rafacz later edit the interviews for length and clarity.
In one season the PreViews creative team has learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t in producing an electronic magazine. Next season promises even more innovations. “We’re exploring the options of adding new features and expanding the magazine’s interactive capabilities, and starting to research and evaluate our gains from using new media,” Sullivan says.
penn state and carleton architecture students collaborate using high-speed network
During the spring 2007 semester, Penn State third-year architecture students designed renovations for the School of Architecture at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada—without ever visiting the school. They collaborated with students at Carleton using the National LambdaRail network (NLR), a U.S. higher education consortium that maintains fiber-optic-linked networks capable of transmitting data at a rate of 10 gigabytes a second—a rate that would allow an entire DVD movie to be transferred in about four seconds.
Using the Immersive Environments Lab in the Stuckeman Family Building, Penn State third-year architecture students present their model for a vertical flight museum to their classmates and to students at Carleton University (as seen in panel on the right).
Penn State joined the NLR, which is owned and controlled by the U.S. research community, in summer 2006. The collaborative architecture project with Carleton is among the first at Penn State to take advantage of the bandwith capabilities offered by the NLR. Canadian institutions support a similar national infrastructure, and Carleton is the only university in Canada to utilize the high-speed network for the design disciplines. Currently both networks are primarily used in the engineering and physics fields.
Katsu Muramoto, associate professor of architecture at Penn State, and Michael Jemtrud (’93 B.Arch.), associate professor of architecture at Carleton University, teach the third-year studios at their respective locations. They began discussing a collaborative project about a year ago because they agreed it “seemed like a natural fit.” Both architecture programs have been using immersive environments in their courses for a number of years, through Penn State’s Immersive Environments Laboratory and the internationally recognized Carleton Immersive Media Studio.
The semester-long project was not just about using the NLR. During the first part of the semester, the Penn State and Carleton students collaborated on designing a vertical flight museum in Engineering Unit C on the University Park campus. However, they utilized low-bandwith technologies that did not allow them to work together in “real time”—Penn State students would work on the model and then send it electronically to the Carleton students so they could work on it. When they used the NLR during the second part of the semester, they were able to collaborate like they would if they were in the same location, working on the same model at the same time. For example, a student at Penn State could see a line drawn by a student at Carleton while that student was drawing it.
Collaboration has always been a hallmark of the architecture profession, but architects and other design professionals are increasingly collaborating with colleagues at widely dispersed locations. Therefore, the Penn State/Carleton project introduced students to an important characteristic of the professional world in addition to serving as an academic exercise. For Muramoto and Jemtrud, it was a mutually beneficial research project that will aid them in implementing more efficient and effective uses of new technologies in their immersive environment labs. They intend to continue the collaboration using the NLR in future semesters.
Although the NLR is relatively new to the arts and design disciplines, Muramoto and Jemtrud agree the possibilities are endless. The NLR greatly enhances the concept of e-learning, allowing, for example, instructors of music and dance to clearly illustrate concepts in real time to students at remote locations. In addition, with the high-definition technologies that are part of the NLR, visuals are clearer and “finally meet designers’ standards,” according to Jemtrud.
The Penn State/Carleton project, which received a College of Arts and Architecture Faculty Research Grant, is a joint effort involving the universities’ architecture departments and Penn State’s Information Technology Services. Other Penn State architecture faculty members involved include Loukas Kalisperis and George Otto (Archirecture) and Tim Murtha (landscape architecture). For more information on Penn State’s use of the NLR, visit http://its.psu.edu/nlr/. –AMM
school of visual arts, e-learning institute launch online studio course
In fall 2006, the Penn State School of Visual Arts and the College of Arts and Architecture e-Learning Institute launched Art 10: Introduction to Visual Studies, the institute’s first online general education studio course. The newly designed course, aimed at non-art majors who wish to complete their general arts requirement, is intended to teach students how to identify creative elements, constructively critique artwork and convey personal appreciation for various artistic styles through writing and art-making. The course teaches fundamental art concepts in the context of fantastic art (also known as visionary or grotesque art), mail art (which uses the postal system as a medium), portraiture photography, three-dimensional art and artistic personal collections.
Examples of he course interface for the online version of Art 10: Introduction to Visual Studies.
Art 10 was first offered as a traditional studio-based course in summer 2003, in response to the School of Visual Arts’ desire to offer more general education courses to the University. At the time, associate professor Jean Sanders, who developed the course, and instructor Anna Divinsky, who previously served as a teaching assistant to Sanders, saw the power and potential for an online version.
Beginning in February 2006, Divinsky worked closely with the e-Learning Institute to redesign the course for a fully online delivery. During both the fall 2006 and spring 2007 semesters, Sanders and Divinsky taught two sections online to a total of 130 students (fall 2006 was the pilot semester). According to Divinsky, authoring and teaching Art 10 is very gratifying. “[It] has been one of my biggest achievements. I find the fact that hundreds of students can learn, correspond and create within a virtual classroom to be incredibly fascinating.”
The e-Learning Institute spearheaded the design and development of Art 10. The institute’s staff of e-learning specialists, under the direction of Keith Bailey, worked with Divinsky to create the online content, Web interface and course activities and assignments.
The institute’s goal was to create a fully online course that incorporated fundamental art concepts and was teachable by multiple faculty members. Reaching this goal involved a creative utilization of three technologies: 1) the ANGEL course management system for quizzing and communication; 2) the “assignment studio,” an application custom-created by the institute to meet the unique requirements of studio art students needing to submit, describe and critique artwork; and 3) online content to teach and demonstrate course concepts, including image galleries of influential artists.
Each of the components plays an integral role in converting what would normally be a face-to-face studio course into a successful online experience for students. According to Bailey, director of the e-Learning Institute, the assignment studio is particularly important. “Our primary challenge with this course was to create an online environment that closely mimics the essence of a traditional studio-based course. I believe the creation of the assignment studio accomplished this.”
Currently, Art 10 is offered to resident University Park students only, but there are plans to extend the course to the World Campus and to other Penn State locations via the e-Learning Cooperative. For more information about the course, visit http://elearning.psu.edu/marketing/art10 to view a sample syllabus, assignment and lesson.
