DE Oracle @ UMUC

Embedding Web 2.0 Objects Into a WebTycho Classroom

Laddie Odom

Multimedia Producer

Center for Support of Instruction

Published: September-October 2008

Category: » Online-pedagogy » Emerging-technologies

The buzz surrounding "Web 2.0" may have you wondering how you can best utilize the explosion of interactive, rich media content from service hosts such as Google Maps, Flickr, and YouTube. Traditionally, instructors have provided hyperlinks to content hosted on external Web sites. With a growing number of media content hosting sites providing automatically generated embed code, it is now easier than ever to present this supplemental content directly inside your WebTycho classroom.

Web 2.0 content may be a course-relevant video, a PowerPoint-style presentation, an interactive polling tool, a collaborative map, or any one of a myriad of Open Educational Resources (OERs) that are now freely available. The clickable YouTube video below (Figure 1) is a typical Web 2.0 object.

Rather than presenting a traditional hyperlink to the video on the YouTube Web site, we have embedded video playback directly in this Web page. The use of embed code provided by the content host enables us to easily present the object in the contextual wrapper of this page or even a WebTycho classroom. Yet, the content actually remains on the host's server, so there is no additional bandwidth drain on our servers. The availability of these easily embedded objects is rapidly increasing. This purpose of this article is to facilitate the practice of embedding course-relevant objects in WebTycho classrooms. Links to content sites and "how-to" instructions are provided at the end of the article.

What Exactly is Embedding?

If you have recently watched a video at the YouTube Web site, you may have noticed that just to the right of the video is a text field containing HTML code. The red box in Figure 2 below shows the location of this information on a YouTube Web page. This is an example of embed code. It is automatically generated by the content host and freely offered as a service to those who wish to embed video playback directly in their own Web site or content platform.

 
Figure 2

Embedding Is Not New

Unlike the concept of Web 2.0, embedding is not new at all. Most of the methods and tags (<object>, <embed>, <iframe>, etc.) required to embed Web 2.0 objects have been around for quite some time. Some UMUC faculty have used these tags to embed their own presentation objects in their Web pages or classrooms. Additionally, some course content modules developed by UMUC use embed tags to present multimedia content inside the module page rather than as a separate hyperlink.

What has changed significantly is the ease of access to automatically generated embed code and the ever-expanding number of potentially useful objects to embed. This expansion has been at least partially fueled by the dynamic growth in social networks and the burgeoning Web 2.0 services that cater to users of those sites.

Why Embed?

Hyperlinking is the traditional manner for presenting newer forms of external content, such as a course-relevant YouTube video. Yet, with this method, the student encounters unrelated, distracting content surrounding the video—thus potentially diminishing the value of the intended learning experience. Through embedding, the faculty member can integrate the relevant object into the course text, thereby facilitating a more focused, contextually consistent experience.

Linking vs. Embedding in WebTycho: A Comparison of Methods

The contextual examples provided below by Richard Schumaker, Director of Worldwide Training for UMUC's Center for Teaching and Learning, underscore the benefits of embedding objects directly in WebTycho rather than using hyperlinks to direct students to the same content.

Traditional Linking Method

In Figure 3 below, the blue text, "The Tempest - A Classic" represents a hyperlink to an external resource, which is a video on the YouTube Web site.

 
Figure 3

After clicking the hyperlinked text, the student is taken out of the WebTycho classroom to a new browser window, as depicted in Figure 4. The potential for distraction abounds, as the student is confronted with a number of links pointing to other videos, miscellaneous ads, and comments. These items, which are clearly not germane to the lesson, lead the student's focus away from the instructor's intended content.

 
Figure 4

Embedding Method

In examining the YouTube page containing the desired video, you can see that YouTube has already provided the embed code (located inside the red box in Figure 5) needed to play this video inside another Web page, including a WebTycho classroom page.

Figure 5

The embed code can easily be selected and copied directly from the YouTube page. With the Text Formatting Editor (TFE) enabled in WebTycho, you can create a new text page in Course Content, select HTML from the View menu, and then paste the embed code as shown below in Figure 6. (Complete step-by-step directions for performing this task are provided in the embedding "how to" instructions that accompany this article.)

 
Figure 6

The resulting Course Content page is depicted in Figure 7. As you can see, video playback is enabled directly within the WebTycho classroom, contextually wrapped within the written subject matter. Distracting links, ads, and unwanted video thumbnails are no longer a concern.

 
Figure 7

Figure 8 shows an example of an embedded PowerPoint presentation. With the use of automatically generated embed code, embedding represents a simpler and more efficient method compared to the uploading and downloading of PowerPoint files or the technique used for placing Impatica files into a classroom, which requires uploading files to the WebTycho servers.

 
Figure 8

An embedded drag-and-drop Open Educational Resource (OER) object is presented in Figure 9. This article just scratches the surface of what is possible with embedding.

Figure 9 

Advantages and Disadvantages of Embedding

As with all technological tools and methods, embedding has its advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages:

• The ability to rapidly and easily add interactivity, rich media, enhanced collaboration, and community building objects directly within the confines of the online classroom
• Easy and instantaneous access to presentation materials provided directly in the context of the lesson in which they occur
• No need for uploads to the WebTycho servers
• Scalability:
  • No development costs
  • Little to no technical impact on existing infrastructure

Disadvantages:

• Third-party content removal at any time from the hosting site by the content owner
• The danger of "technological fadism" and overuse (as often seen with animated gifs, morphing, pop-ups, gratuitous 3-D, etc.)
• General lack of quality assurance; each instructor must critically review the content for appropriateness and relevance prior to embedding
• Technical issues, such as browser incompatibilities or plug-in requirements

Critical Considerations

It is important to be judicious when making decisions about what to embed in the classroom. Issues such as accessibility, accuracy, attribution, copyright, objectivity, and timeliness should be considered. A great place to locate criteria and information to consider can be found in Joe Rawson's and Cynthia Thomes's concurrent DE Oracle article this month, Open Educational Resources. 

Conclusions

Embedding Web 2.0 content within WebTycho is now a fairly simple, straightforward process, with many potential advantages over the traditional use of external hyperlinks.

YouTube is simply one example of the type of Web 2.0 content that you can easily embed for playback within your online classroom. There are many other examples to discover and explore. At the end of this article, you will find links to a list of suggested objects and services and a "how-to" article that provides more details regarding various embedding tags and methods.

DE Oracle Live!

The inaugural session of DE Oracle Live! (a series of live webinars hosted by CSI and presented via UMUC's Wimba Live Classroom) was held in October 2008. The subject of the first event explained how to embed Web 2.0 objects in a WebTycho classroom. During the webinar a live, step-by-step demonstration of the YouTube embed procedure presented in this article, along with several other interesting examples was conducted. The webinar forum provided participants with the opportunity to question the presenters in real time. A recording of the session is available for those who are unable to attend the live session. If you have subscribed to the DE Oracle, you will receive a registration notice for any upcoming DE Oracle Live! sessions via e-mail. If you have not yet subscribed to the DE Oracle, please see our registration page.

Resources

• Suggested Web 2.0 Service Sites
• How to Embed Web 2.0 content into WebTycho

Acknowledgements

• Linda Smelser (CSI), Researcher, Editor
• Susan Pollack (CSI), Researcher, Editor
• Husein Abdul-Hamid (OERG), Consultant
• Richard Schumaker (CTL), Consultant