Interactive Videos

1 Requirements

1.1 Basic Concept

The “Interactive Video Object” – IVO - feature is supposed to be a tool to make video content more engaging and activating by stopping the video at predefined points in time along with the presentation of pieces of information (e.g. plain text or perhaps some ILIAS page editor content) and / or questions that are supposed to be answered before the learner continues watching the video. These breakpoints might even be made optional in order to simply display an “on-the-fly” info for the viewers. It should be possible to skip a question and continue watching the video. IVO should store the answers of a user in order to present directly the next time when the respective question is shown.
The IVO could also be used as a collaborative tool, when questions and comments are set by the students (if they have the permission “Edit”) at timestamps (jump marks) within the time range of the video to provide an easy way of “annotating” / “commenting” on parts of the video. Regular ILIAS commenting of the entire object should also be possible.
Ideally, the presentation / the editing of the IVO should work as well on mobile devices.

1.2 Degrees of complexity and possible varieties of implementation

There are several possible “varieties” of implementation for this feature

1. standalone repository object
   
2. part of the content of ILIAS learning modules
   
3. combination of a) + b)
   
4. new question type of the test (possible application of the “question groups”)
   

There are, as always, several degrees of complexity (depending on the chosen variety) in which this could be realized. Possible parameters of the feature are:

• available question types in the IVO (e.g. SC, MC, …)
  
• plain text “annotations” vs. rich text content snippets for timestamps
  
• single / multiple questions per timestamp
  
• authoring comfort (especially time stamp selection)
  
• options for integrating it into other content OR other content (like feedback) into the IVO
  
• storing of the user data (answers) / means of evaluation of the answers for the instructor
  

1.3 Mockups:

The following mockups represent the standalone variety. They should be appreciated as "native painting" (because my visualisation skills are unfortunately limited) and I promise, I'll use Pencil next time :)

1.4 Requirements of the authoring tool / screen:

• simple and easy to use UI, especially with regard to setting up the question and the question timing.
• multiple Questions per time stamp
• up / down selector and “visual time stamp editor”, when scrolling through the video the current point of time is shown in an up / down selector (and vice versa)
• questions should behave like all questions in an ILIAS learning module do
• questions can be marked obligatory, meaning that the player will not play the video any further than up to this point before an answer is given to this question
• (extensive) feedback to each questions should be made visible with regard to correct / incorrect answers (same as in Test), ideally authoring done with the ILIAS page editor, minimally internal links further material / other pages
• button “Add Note” at the selected timestamp, whereas a new “note” could be simply entered through an overlay (plain text) or a separate screen (rich text content / page editor) (note: whether the term “note” is a good choice here needs to be determined)
• add a switch for each note / question “Pause video”. if it is checked the Video will pause, if not the questions / note should be displayed while the video continues running
• Tab: “Participants” which lists the answers of the users who have done the quiz already. There should be an export to CSV /XLS button for this data.
• [NOT IN THE MOCKUPS] just like most repository objects the IVO should have a rating that can be switched on for the entire thing (e.g. files)

1.5 Requirements for the learner’s view:

• users are supposed to see a minimally cluttered screen, meaning that during playback nothing except the mediaplayer should be visible
• when users watch the video in fullscreen mode and reach a question / note timestamp the fullscreen mode should be exited automatically
• when a breakpoint is reached, the screen should scroll to the first question on the screen (useful on small screens)
• if there is only one question for a time stamp, question should be displayed next to the mediaplayer, feedback should be shown beneath the media player
• if multiple question are present, all questions and their feedback should be shown beneath the video
• ILIAS standard commenting should be done at the bottom

2 Additional Information

• Idea / concept: Marko Glaubitz, marko.glaubitz@rz.uni-freiburg.de, Universität Freiburg
• Interest in funding: Plugin impolementation funded by Universität Freiburg, funding for trunk integration partly offered by Universität Freiburg and hopefully other institutions
• Maintainer: (will be set by Jour Fixe / maintainer)
• Implementation of the feature is done by Plugin developed by Databay AG, (will be set by Jour Fixe / maintainer)
• Testcases by: (please add your name if you want to create the testcases for this feature)

3 Discussion

AT 2015-06-16: Demonstration at user meeting "ILIAS Süd" in Konstanz was quite compelling.  

4 Implementation

5 Plugin

In a frist step, this concept is developed by Databay AG as a standalone plugin offering single and multiple choice questions (added by intructors) and textual annotations added by students and instructors.

However, we would strongly appreciate if the JF decided to integrate this as a new core item and repository object.