Educational Broadcasting and the Web: Opportunities and challenges for the ABC Ian Vaile Education Online Producer ABC Multimedia

This paper is divided into several parts:

• A quick look at the position of the Web as an Australian broadcast mass medium.
• An overview of present characteristics of educational broadcasting and the "new media" (online and CD-ROMs).
• A case study of the ABC Education Online strategy.
• A summary of ABC Online's history and role

It is largely written in summary form for online reading. For an interesting view on how people read on the web ("They Don't"), see Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox on this subject.

This file vaile.html is in "EdTech'98 format". For the original formatting, see vaile01.htm

The Web as a new mass medium

The evolution of the Web marks the arrival of a new medium of mass communication. It's a hybrid of pre-existing information forms - text, image, video and audio- but the delivery patterns are novel and the usage patterns, business models and even core technologies, while evolving swiftly, are still in their infancy. The medium presents a challenge to traditional broadcast media, both commercial and public, to adapt and to translate their strengths into the new form. But as many broadcasters are learning to their expense, it really is a new medium: the Web is not TV.

The cost of learning that lesson has meant many broadcasters now have a jaundiced view about investing in Web projects. They effectively have no choice other than to do exactly that, however, for a number of reasons:

• The number of households connected is growing rapidly - not as rapidly as in 1996 and 1997 but still very quickly.

• The demographic most attracted to the net - the 15-25 age group with growing disposable income, flexible brand loyalties and no technofear - are a critical audience segment for advertisers. Broadcasters therefore cannot afford to lose this demographic.

• Studies indicate that time spent on the web is time taken from watching TV: while it is early days yet and the numbers are small, TV is losing audience to the new medium and this trend cannot be ignored.

• Broadcasters can't be seen to turn their backs on a powerful new social and economic phenomenon without appearing to be conservative and unable to adapt to a new environment: this is more true of TV than radio, which has a more age-segmented marketplace.

• There's always the elusive potential of a gold mine awaiting companies which can work out a profit making model for a web presence.

• Broadcasters have a powerful means of cross-promotion at their command, to feed audiences back and forth between media and to reinforce their loyalty.

Some basics: what the three media can do - and can't do

• entertainment
• information ( including news)
• advertising
• builds a community - albeit an attenuated and diffuse one. At the least, it provides a common experience.

Consider the different characteristics of each medium:

Broadcast TV (as opposed to cable):

• transmits high-quality full motion synchronised audio and video, allowing a rich experience for viewers
• allows multiple users in one space and a shared experience
• allows a common experience for viewers but no interaction between them
• can be either live or prerecorded
• is incapable of direct feedback to programs by viewers
• has immense market penetration
• has simple user interface and stable, cheap technology
• uses considerable power and is thus still generally tied to a wall power outlet
• is ill-adapted to portability: small screens are difficult to watch
• is not on-demand (i.e. is "synchronous"), except when used with video recorders
• is non-interactive
• is very expensive to create
• consumer TV sets are of moderate $ cost and no learning is needed by users
• has a well established advertising revenue model
• has a well-established set of production techniques
• cable allows for a great range of choice in programming but still not on-demand

• allows very high quality audio
• allows multiple users in one space
• allows inattentive use
• is ubiquitous
• has simple user interface and stable, cheap technology
• can be either live, prerecorded or automated
• is capable of immediate on-air feedback (albeit heavily mediated) through talkback
• is not on-demand ("synchronous")
• is very portable
• is non-interactive
• programming is relatively cheap to create, compared to TV
• radio receivers are very cheap in dollar cost and cost no learning time
• has a well established advertising revenue model
• has a well-established set of production techniques
• is losing money in the AM band (only 6 of the 19 capital city AM stations were profitable last year, as opposed to 16 out of 20 capital city FM stations)

• has acceptable audio quality and very poor video quality
• can entail very frustrating experiences due to delays and technical faults
• is able to present immense amounts of information
• is completely interactive and driven by the user
• is overwhelmingly on-demand (" asynchronous")
• can be live, archived or automated
• has an awkward interface and fluid technology and standards
• requires significant expense for equipment and requires skills to use
• is practically non-portable - tied to power and phone (road warriors notwithstanding)
• is cheap to create compared to TV but can become costly very rapidly
• has no proven reliable advertising models
• has no proven reliable business models

Educational broadcasting media compared

A major change in the manner in which broadcast media could be used educationally came with the development and market penetration of domestic video recorders. it had always been possible to record radio programs, but now it became possible ( especially with the rapid evolution of programmable timers in VCRs) for users to record and time-shift video without having to purchase physical copies.

In a way, that development philosophically foreshadowed the arrival of online educational media, with its integral on-demand nature and its element of user choice in recording and replay. Like online materials, the broadcast video material is effectively of free or marginal cost to the user and like online materials in the infancy of the technology it was awkward, unfriendly and unfamiliar.

In addition to broadcast video, a thriving market arose in non-broadcast video for education, through larger text publishers as well as a number of independent production companies. This is analagous to the CD-ROM model - with the same constraints of physical distribution but also with the same clear and simple revenue system based on traditional unit-sale models.

The characteristics of traditional educational broadcasting

• long shelf-life of product compared to other forms of mass market electronic media
• multiple repeats (either uses or transmissions) acceptable
• significant end-user time-shifting ( ie recording for later use)
• national orientation
• strong teacher loyalty to proven product
• high classroom utility - usually high student interest
• doesn't encourage fundamental changes in teaching style or relationships with students
• is not interactive ( though can be used to spark class interaction)
• is a resource rather than an activity
• is very specifically age/curriculum targeted
• is effectively free to consumers
• occurs at rigidly scheduled times
• is very difficult and costly to update
• uses stable and cheap technology
• has years of proven teaching technique evolved around it
• has an unbroken, linear heritage of teaching technique with older AV technologies
• almost universal access

• unstable, rapidly evolving technology
• awkward access and interface
• highly interactive
• can be challenging for teachers to control use of
• demands new teaching methods
• demands new methods of teacher training
• very high interest level in students - probably for next 5 years
• materials online effectively free
• setup costs ( in $ and time) significant for schools
• completely on-demand
• long shelf-life
• easy to update
• rapid evolution of business, production and usage models
• no effective commercial model so far in getting significant profits from educational market
• low levels of Australian content
• enormous amount of material available world-wide
• allows significant collaborative possibilities and content creation possibilities by users
• allows interaction many to many

• difficult to implement across a class with numerous computers: this is not a problem where a school has few computers in the first place
• CD-ROMS offer rapid access and are proven, stable technology, which will reliably work or obviously fail
• it is possible for a teacher to know everything on a CD-ROM or to vouch for its educational bona fides
• the disks themselves are easy to lose and hard to replace. the web cannot be misplaced.
• CD-ROMs go out of date eventually, though well designed product has long lives
• CD-ROMs are very expensive to produce and take a long period
• the web is cheap to produce content for but expensive to maintain and technically service
• CD-ROMs and DVDs offer full-motion high quality video and audio with no restriction on bandwidth.

As far as the ABC is concerned, the future for CD-ROMs, outside of licensing content and properties, is in creating hybrid online/CD services which use a CD-ROM or DVD as a local store of large files (audio and video) which are called up by a web site.

The characteristics of the Australian online education environment:

In a nutshell, highly variable but improving.
• high levels of committment from all state and territory governments to connection of schools
• highly variable degrees of strategic planning in implementing networking of schools
• widely variable levels of equipment and connectivity well into the future
• commitment to teacher training, but very wide range of existing expertise
• relatively high average age of school-sector teachers ( typically low forties)
• absolute lack of standardised browsers or technology
• wide variation in cost of access, from high-bandwidth dedicated ISDN lines to pay-by-time dial-ups on STD lines in the bush
• establishment of intranets by education departments and even schools
• relatively expensive technology costs and telco costs ( internationally speaking)
• very rapid domestic uptake of new technology and penetration of computers and the Internet into homes and offices
• some states ( notably Victoria) have created large and sophisticated networks (SoFWeb) dedicated to educational publishing and interaction
• commercial organisations attempting to establish a revenue stream from online activity but largely failing
• multiple users of single computers
• vocal teacher and student base
• nobody wants to pay for content.

ABC Online's history and role: http://www.abc.net.au

The ABC's situation, regarding translation of broadcast material into an online form, is a little different from that of its commercial broadcasting peers. For a start, the ABC is both a radio and TV broadcaster on a national level. It also creates a wide range of information-rich material which translates well into text and which can exist as on-demand audio (unlike commercial or ABC metro radio strip-programming).

We are not trying to make a profit from the web, nor are we having to grapple with problematic advertising strategies. In this we are not so unusual: many commercial web projects are very highly subsidised and are not expected to return profits.

The ABC has had an Online arm since 1995 and it's now formally recognised as a national network, on a par with TV, Triple J and other such ABC networks. ABC Multimedia acts in a co-ordinating, advisory and special projects, but the vast majority of web production is done by the broadcast production units themselves - the people who make the programs. It's the enthusiasm, skill and dedication of many hard-pressed broadcasters that has made ABC Online the success it is today.

There is strong support at board and senior executive level for online activity and for intranet development as well. Most critically, many program makers now regard the Web as a useful adjunct to their broadcast activity and are prepared to devote resources - however scarce- to a Web reflection of their projects. This is more true in radio than in TV.

The ABC Online service is consistently in the top 5 domestic web sites visited by Australians, and that includes search engines like Anzwers and Alta Vista. Currently running at over 38,000 pages of material on the site and upwards of five million page accesses per month, ABC Online is a very significant player in Australian online content.

ABC Online's approach has a number of features:

• Distributed production: the people that make the broadcast programs usually make the websites
• TV and radio sites which reflect the programming and add information for existing users but which do not attempt to replicate the experience of either TV or radio on the web
• High levels of interactivity and currency in many sites ( Triple j, News, BtN, Radio National)
• No advertising
• Special event sites ( elections, sporting events, political events) providing extensive coverage
• Production guidelines emphasising high accessibility and cross-browser compatibility as well as reluctance to use plug-ins
• Live streaming of selected audio output: Radio Australia and Triple J

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The ABC's experience and strategy in online education ABC Education Online

From the beginnings of the ABC Online service, there has been an educational presence. One of the first three web sites to exist on the ABC was Behind The News, which is still going strong as a web vehicle and is attracting very good rates of usage. It's the longest-running still active site on ABC Online.

Over the years there have been many ABC educational sites appear, such as Schools Television [now Education Television].

In mid-1997, however, the potential of the new medium to serve an educational market was given higher priority at senior levels of the ABC by the creation of an Education Online portfolio, with a staff position attached, to coordinate such sites and generate new resources from existing ABC material. Part of that position was also designed to seek out and explore relationships with educational organisations and institutions, both commercial and public, which could lead to collaborative projects.

Currently there are a number of sites of primarily educational intent on ABC Online. Details of all of the sites can be found at Learn Online, the "gateway" site for the ABC education online resources.

Educational sites fall into two categories: those attached to parent radio or TV programs:

• BtN
• Frontier Education
• Vital Systems
• For the Juniors
• The Good Citizen

and those which are "special projects" containing not only material from existing programs but web-original material as well:

• Oceans Alive
• ConCon
• LabNotes.

Convergence is a term often used to describe this phenomenon, and usually it implies the web will evolve more of the characteristics of broadcast and pay TV. Personally I think this is a somewhat feeble vision of what will truly occur and that the spillover of interactive digital modes of media use will change television and radio more profoundly than vice-versa.

Regardless of that, though, it seems to me that the ABC faces a future in which it ceases being a maker of radio, television and online network material and becomes a cross-media information and entertainment producer, using all three media to reach the most appropriate audience. Nowhere is this more true than in the education sector.

So far our success has been variable. Projects such as BtN are very successful, tapping into the parent program's strong pedigree in targeted educational material. Some of the stand-alone projects are still trying to find their way, and in no case have we managed to draw on the full resources of the ABC's immense video and audio archive.

It's early days yet, however,and we are trying to develop models appropriate to both our existing strengths and our realistic resource abilities.

One direction most promising is the formation of alliances and co-productions with other organisations with complementary aims. There are already some well established existing relationships ( such as with Open Learning Australia) and others which are rapidly emerging ( such as the Monash/OLA/Radio Australia/ABC Online project "The Money Markets" or the British Council/Community Biodiversity Network/ABC Online project Oceans Alive) and there are other exploratory discussions under way. With constrained budgets, it is possible for the ABC to dramatically increase the value of its material by seeking out partnerships with other non-commercial organisations with specialist expertise.

The near future for online education

Within that timeframe, growth in bandwidth and enhanced compression will mean that full-motion full-screen video over the web into schools will become a realistic tool. High bandwidth home connections will also become commercially available, albeit at a high price if current telco strategies are anything to go by.

The proliferation of online services and devices throughout the entire community will also mean that much of the mystique of the medium will have worn off and, coupled with a maturing classroom methodology, we'll be able to really go to work on creating educational materials on a much more stable and reliable technological foundation.

If the US experience is anything to go by, we'll also be able to look forward to the successors of today's CD-ROM makers creating very precisely targeted educational materials, probably with a much closer curriculum tailoring than is familiar today. The tools to make these product are changing rapidly as well so "Australianising" a foreign title will be a simpler and more cost-effective proposition, with the potential to rebuild an existing product for our market in a way uneconomical today. Likewise, homegrown resources will see a drop in the technical production costs - but the educational development will always remain expensive.

There'll also be a trend for today's console machines - Nintendo and Playstation - to develop educational material to stave off the challenge from personal computers and build on the huge installed base.

The ABC intends to be part of this future and is well positioned to be a strong player in the field. It's a challenge that we're keen to meet.

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Author: Ian Vaile is Education Online Producer, ABC Multimedia This document is a personal opinion and does not reflect any official ABC position or policy. All external links cited in this presentation are live and correct as of 19 June 1998. Please cite as: Vaile, I. (1998). Educational Broadcasting and the Web: Opportunities and challenges for the ABC. In C. McBeath and R. Atkinson (Eds), Planning for Progress, Partnership and Profit. Proceedings EdTech'98. Perth: Australian Society for Educational Technology. http://www.aset.org.au/confs/edtech98/pubs/articles/vaile.html