This session talks about an initiative at Carnegie Mellon University to build an online open source teaching tool and complementary interactive video recording and production hardware. Our system consists of a hardware system (TelKart) to record videos, slides, and/or whiteboard, as well as a software system called QnA to create and present lecture notes and assessments through a web interface. The resulting videos, instructions, and assessments can act as part of a course or a stand-alone instructional piece.
The software part (QnA) was implemented using open source software, and we used a user-centered approach to building the system, seeking active feedback from instructors. The QnA system is deployed in Carnegie Mellon’s campuses in Pittsburgh and Silicon Valley and is in closed beta to students in the Pittsburgh area.
The hardware part (TelKart) records interactive videos, either live streaming or recorded course content. We developed a custom hardware solution through iterative prototyping and refinement. The hardware is deployed at Carnegie Mellon’s Pittsburgh campus. One part of our future work consists of prototyping and evaluating a more lightweight hardware solution.
We hope to use this session to talk about our insights deploying the system to computer science courses, including challenges faced in a university setting and future work. We also hope to seek feedback towards making our software system open and employing OER principles in synergy with the university guidelines. Finally, we hope to showcase and seek feedback about our lightweight hardware solution.
