Video-Lectures over Internet - E-Infrastructures and Technologies for Lifelong Learning - page 255

Chapter 10

Video-Lectures over Internet:
The Impact on Education

Marco Ronchetti
Università degli Studi di Trento, Italy

ABSTRACT

Recent trends suggest that multimedia (in particular audio and video) will increase their share of Internet
traffic, and that users are becoming more and more acquainted with viewing multimedia content on their
computers and mobile devices. Scholarly institutions are experimenting since several years with the
distribution of video-lectures, which are generally not meant as a replacement of traditional lectures,
but rather as a different kind of support of the educational process. After recalling the pioneering ideas,
discussed in this chapter is the pedagogical soundness of the idea of using videos over Internet for
teaching and learning. Later reviewed are the various directions that research has taken over the last
10 years to support and enhance this modality.

INTRODUCTION

over the last year: watching videos on Internet, plus
watching time-shifted TV (which can also happen
through the Internet) amounts now at 6.7% of the
total time devoted to watching videos (Nielsen
2009), and the figure is steadily growing. It is
very likely that these two media, which were once
quite separated, will merge in future at least to a
large extent. This media hybridization is already
evident: short (1 to 5 minutes) video clips on the
Web are becoming more and more common - and
many TV channels give the possibility to access

Over the last decade, Internet popularity has been
steadily growing, up to a point where the time
share spent on the two media is almost equal:
according to an IBM survey of consumers “66%
reported viewing 1-4 hours of TV per day, versus
60% who reported the same levels of personal
Internet usage” 1 . A new trend has been emerging