Converge3. Open source approaches and methods in e-learing: the Deptford.TV case study
This chapter concentrates on the methology used while teaching the introduction to Documentary Film to the MA Screen Documentary students with the use of the Deptford.TV project. I explain what Deptford.TV is, how it works, the technical context of it and how this research benefits the students to learn and understand Documentary Film within the “Participatory Media” context. In the end of the chapter a HowTo manual explains how other teachers can practically use Free and Open Source Tools to publish video on the internet for their own teachings. This HowTo was originally created as a FLOSS1 manual for the transmission network2.
Firstly, there is a shift in the nature of knowledge and how knowledge is created and organised, and secondly there is a cultural shift growing from the use of information and communication technologies, the so-called cyberculture. These two strands mirror the twin concerns of those arguing for a shift in educational processes to align with the perceived demands of a knowledge economy: namely, the concern with developing young people able to act as innovators and creators of knowledge; and the concern with developing young people able to operate effectively within digital and information-rich environments. (Owen 2006)
What Is Deptford.TV?
Deptford.TV3 is a research project on collaborative film-making. It is an online media database documenting the regeneration process of Deptford, in South-East London. Deptford.TV functions as an open, collaborative platform that allows students to store, share, re-edit and redistribute the documentation of the regeneration process. The open and collaborative aspect of the project is of particular importance as it manifests a form of liberated media practice. In the case of Deptforf.TV this aspect is manifested in two ways: a) students can become producers by submitting their own footage, b) the interface that is being used enables students to discuss and interact with each other through the database. This instant interaction and feedback process is what Andone calls a boundless learning environment.
Treating the Internet and mobile phones as everyday tools means that collaboration is an area of great potential for digital students and they use extensively the “virtual study groups” (Jones and Madden, 2002). These groups can be synchronous or asynchronous but the ‘feeling’ is of instant communication. This has led to a continuous need for instant feedback which is also found in their learning attitudes. Despite the traditionally restrictive educational settings in which they often have to function, today’s students perceive their learning environments as boundless. (Andone 2007)
The aim of the Deptford.TV project is to research new forms of film-making with a focus on developing technologies and platforms that can support collective post-production – the most difficult part of film production in terms of collaborative work, as it normally takes place in a controlled environment directed by experts (director, editor). One of the project's aims is to create a virtual editing suite with the use of new and alternative media and technologies like file-sharing, as well as social and editing software. As a process, collective post-production will also include the processes of script-writing, filming, editing and distribution. In my research I envisage the 'collective film' as existing 'between idea and distribution': students can collaborate through the use of the virtual editing suite, which enables for multiple processes of shooting, editing and viewing of the media contents to take place in parallel.
The student-producers brought to the team varying levels of knowledge and skill, and different sets of backgrounds and experiences. They were not provided with any formal training, but rather were introduced to the script writing, editing and presentation process by means of examples. They gradually developed competence in the various facets of the process through undergoing a number of practice runs, with decreasing levels of guidance and scaffolding, as well as through their interactions with one another. Many of them also familiarised themselves with digital audio recording and editing tools, as well as web technology as it applies to podcasting, through self-directed research and reading in their own time. (Lee 2007)
http://www.converge.org.uk/img/pgcert/fig2.jpg
(Fig. 2 from Knight 2004 effective practice with e-learning)
The Open Source4 and Free Software5 movements share the source code of their programs under a copyleft license and are thus ideal for such a student led production environment where the learning activity is at the center (see Fig. 2). In the same way, collective film-making web interfaces will share the film 'source code', that is, the rough material plus the meta-data created by logging and editing this material. Such web-interfaces challenge the notion of traditional teaching: on the one hand the production and distribution processes merge together; on the other hand the students can participate actively undertaking a role that has always, within the frame of traditional media production, been exclusively reserved to producers. This enables students to become peer reviewers of their works themselves and as such assess their works much more critical, because of this, with refering to Knight (see Fig. 2), I define the use of Open Source as a big step towards an effective learning practice. “In this instance, these technologies acted as an alternative to the asynchronous conferencing system. Such is representative of the type of peer-to-peer dialogue these technologies are specifically designed to support. ” (Weller 2004)
It is no exaggeration to say that faulty assumptions and practices about assessment do more damage than any other single factor. As Ramsden (1992) puts it, the assessment is the curriculum, as far as the students are concerned. They’ll learn what they think they’ll be assessed on, not what’s in the curriculum, or what’s been ‘covered’ in class. The trick is, then, to make sure the assessment tasks mirror what you intended them to learn. (Biggs 2002) The Deptford.TV database uses technologies (see chapter 1) so that the material - that is the film - can be recombined by the students, thus giving the students control over the interpretative matrix in order for them to construct their own meanings. The Deptford.TV project generates an online public space where students can discuss the regeneration process and the transformations this brings to specific, physical public spaces. This online public space exists as a weblog on the website http://deptford.tv. Video-blogging has been discussed as a form of collective documentary-making. According to Hoem6:
In relation to the use of online (found) footage the term 'collective documentary' becomes highly relevant, on the one hand emphasizing the intention of telling something significant about real life events, on the other hand telling that the work is made as a result of several people working together, not as an organized team defined by a given task, but rather as a small community with shared interests.” (2004:6) Hoem goes on to argue that blogs provide “an individual base for entering a community” (2004:7): on the one hand maintaining a blog is an individual activity, whereas on the other hand the process of blogging often becomes part of a collaborative effort where students contribute different types of content in multiple ways and on different levels. According to Hoem blogs are blurring “the boundaries between production, distribution and consumption” (2004:7), whereas they necessarily redefine notions of media literacy so as to “reflect(s) an awareness of both the consuming and the producing aspects of media technology.” (2004:7). For Ferguson the blog becomes a research diary.
The authors used many distinctive blog features that would not have been available with a handwritten research journal. Hyperlinks allowed them to link their research blogs to useful information sources, creating a knowledge network with the student blog at its centre. Emoticons and images were used to personalise blog entries, incorporating the essence of how the author was feeling at that time. Categories and a comprehensive search facility provided efficient information retrieval of postings throughout the lifetime of the blog. For example, posts relating to a single topic could be sorted and displayed in a coherent list by selecting a particular category, while entering a search keyword would display all posts containing that term. (Ferguson 2007)
Today, digital networks provide new possibilities for studying and teaching practices through the use of Free Software. Since research, art and ideas never develop within an vacuum but always feed on the past, free culture ideals promise to make our cultural heritage accessible to every student to re-read, re-use and re-mix as they like. According to Armin Medosch “Without open access to the achievements of the past there would be no culture at all.” (2003: 15) His project “Kingdom of piracy”, a book and a CD software package, was released under Open Content licenses and it was free to use, share and edit. One of the softwares found on the CD is the Dyne:Bolic, a Linux distribution used for the Deptford. TV project, as discussed in the previous chapter. An ever increasing amount of recent and current new media projects require that media students work collaboratively with programmers in order to achieve their qualifications. They also often require the use of controversial technologies such as file-sharing or concepts of computer viruses. Such projects are of course, more often than not, criticised by the media industry as giving ground to piracy. “This is not piracy, as industry associations want us to believe, but the creation of open spaces in a number of different ways; they facilitate freedom of expression, collective action in creation and political expression and the notion of a public interest in networked communications.” (Medosch 2003: 18)
“The Internet is not simply a more efficient way of maintaining subcultural activity, it is potentially a space for its creation and recreation on a global scale: 'it remains an invitation to a new imaginary.”(Atton 2005: 8) The problem with such emergent practices is that current legislation neither foresees not engulfs them. Historically, the author has been seen as a genius individual that creates -often in solitude- a finished work of art. Copyright legislation is built around this assumption: “copyright is still influenced by the ideological construct of the 'author' as a singular 'origin' of artistic works” (Atton 2005: 95). Nevertheless, students working in collectives have started setting up their own rules, and creating alternative licenses, see chapter one “the Free Culture Movement”: it does not challenge the copyright law, but it provides alternative licensing systems for the sharing of media content on digital networks, explicitly allowing the technology of file-sharing for the copying and distribution of media content within academia.
I often quote Hoem in my classes when introducing the students to collective documentary-making. In Hoem's paper “Videoblogs as Collective Documentary” he states that: “In relation to the use of online (found) footage the term 'collective documentary' becomes highly relevant, at one hand emphasizing the intention of telling something significant about real life events, on the other hand telling that the work is made as a result of several people working together, not as a organized team defined by a given task, but rather as a small community with shared interests.” (2004: 6)
The most successful online environments seem to be those which are designed in order to make it possible to post information at different levels, socializing new users into the systems publishing-culture. Blogs provide some of these socializing effects providing an individual base for entering a community, blurring the boundaries between production, distribution and consumption. [...] It is important that our notion of media literacy reflects an awareness of both the consuming and the producing aspects of media technology. This is an area where textual blogging already seems to prove its potential. Maintaining a weblog is primarily an individual activity, but since production is closely connected to media consumption blogging often becomes part of a collaborative effort where a number of people might contribute in a multitude of ways. [...] When making video online the most important aspect of collective documentaries is that the raw material is provided by a number of persons and the collective editing-process where the concept of re-editing is essential. Before we look into the different stages of the videoblogging process we have to consider the basis for an online community fostering the kind of collaboration needed in order to promote media literacy through the making of collective documentaries. We may consider collaboration as communication where there are no clear distinction between senders and receivers of information. Nevertheless, all communication has to begin with individual producers who provide some kind of context, transforming data into information by creating relationships between data (text, images, video and sound). Through our experience of different sources of information we construct knowledge in interaction with others by sharing and discussing the different patterns in which information may be organized. In the end knowledge is the basis for wisdom, the most intimate level of understanding. Wisdom can be reckoned as a kind of “meta-knowledge” of relationships achieved through personal experience. (Hoem 2004: 7)
Deptford.TV requires that each student undertake part of the responsibility. This means that 'amateurs' are taking control of domains that were strictly reserved for the professional 'classes' of media-producers. “Whether in music file-sharing, radio broadcasting or the writing of fanzines, the amateur media producer is intimately involved in dominant cultural practices, at the same time as they transform those practices through their own 'autonomous' media.” (Attonb 2005: 15) In that sense Deptford.TV is an adaptive learning environment as described by Andone:
Adaptive e-learning spaces are characterized by the capability of dynamically customising environment features according to the characteristics of each user or of a user model (Brusilovsky, 2001). The adaptive system dynamically composes a user model from user behaviour. Such a model may be scrutable and adaptable, so that the user is explicitly involved in updating and creating it. The e-learning space on which this study was performed is a hybrid one, containing characteristics from both types of system. (Andone 2007)
One can see the book The Electronic Disturbance from Critical Arts Ensemble as a starting point for the teaching collective Documentary Film-making. The Electronic Disturbance has been written to, indeed, disturb and provoke, but what interests me most is CAE's conclusion that creating databases - rather than linear films - could be part of the solution for enabling liberated media practices, by inviting the students to claim a role as participants and political contributors.
Documentary makers must refuse to sacrifice the subjectivity of the viewer. [...] Make sure the viewers know that they are watching a version of the subject matter, not the thing in itself. [...] it would make the documentary model a little less repugnant, since this disclaimer would avoid the assertion that one was showing the truth of the matter. This would allow the system to remain closed, but still produce the realization that what is being documented is not a concrete history [...] It is this nomadic quality that distinguishes them from the rigidly bounded recombinant films of Hollywood; however, like them, they rest comfortably in neither the category of fiction nornonfiction. For the purposes of resistance, the recombinant video offers no resolution; rather, it acts as a database for the viewer to make his own inferences. This aspect of the recombinant film presupposes a desire on the part of the viewer to take control of the interpretive matrix, and construct his own meanings. Such work is interactive to the extent that the viewer cannot be a passive participant. (Critical Arts Ensemble, 1996)
Following the Critical Arts Ensemble’s argumentation, I argue that the distinction between fiction and non-fiction film is misleading, since both use the same language, both manipulate the moving image. Non-fiction films follow the same narrative patterns like a fiction films. Documentary films most often end with a conclusion and a “show down” prepared by the filmmaker from a montage of sequences. I argue that creating a database (such as Deptford.TV) which would provide access to the rough material as the film's 'source code', as well as allow the students to share this material through an open content license, could liberate the medium of documentary film and facilitate the teaching of innovative forms of interactive, many-to-many documentaries. Maybe Open Source Technology in e-learning can be a way forward for new forms of teaching within the field of Media & Communication and redefine media as Laurillard ask for it: “How can the use of media possibly fit with an epistemology “...” that argues against a transmission model for education, and against the idea that knowledge is an entity separable from knower and know? It will mean a redefinition of 'media' at the very least.” (Laurillard 2004)
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