Special focus: The BBC streams flow from Lifesign
Introduction
Lifesign is one of the first projects to offer a subject-specific range of moving-image resources. JISC funding ended in 2003 but, now hosted by the University of Portsmouth, it continues its commitment to provide streaming video for life science students of UK Higher and Further education.
Existing licences for the BBC series The Private Lives of Plants and The Human Body will continue until 2006. Portsmouth has also partnered with the Educational Broadcasting Services Trust to extend licences for programmes from its Shotlist collection, on clinical biochemistry and techniques in cell biology. Portsmouth is also seeking new sources of funding to continue the service beyond 2006 and to expand the catalogue with new programmes.
Innovation
Lifesign is an innovative project delivering rights-cleared videostreams for online learning. It is the first site to offer programmes from BBC Worldwide and it is the first to provide sophisticated tools that allow users to create segments and create playlists. The Lifesign Browser and Playlist Creation Tool makes it very easy for students and lecturers to create custom web pages.
Anyone can create an account and begin searching, viewing, and selecting clips from programmes. Anyone can organise clips into a playlist incorporating additional text and even hyperlinks to other web pages.
To publish this custom page on the web, all that is required is the click of a button. Each custom page has a unique URL that can be shared by email, in word documents, or as links in WebCT, Blackboard, or other HTML documents.
Lifesign has gone far beyond the scope of the original proposal. It has become an ongoing, service with enormous potential. One important area of development at Portsmouth is the application of Digital Rights Management. Using DRM, they will offer programme makers flexible licensing systems to make new content accessible for use in teaching and learning. DRM will help us greatly expand the catalogue of programmes. Janice Gardner from EBS Trust is very interested to see how students are accessing the site.
She said: "Lifesign has made our programmes accessible to many more students than is possible using videotape. We are very excited that Shotlist programmes are among the most popular that Lifesign has to offer and we are keen to continue to support their efforts with new content. Maths for biologists could be next."
The future
As Lifesign grows, it is likely to go beyond the Life Sciences into other disciplines. Using Digital Rights Management, they hope to offer many programmes from Shotlist and from the BBC Learning collection. Lifesign was created to demonstrate the feasibility of delivering streaming video for learning. Now it is poised to become an essential ongoing and evolving service to higher and further education.
Key websites
- Project Website: http://www.lifesign.ac.uk
- Portsmouth Streaming Site: http://stream.port.ac.uk
- EBS Trust: http://www.ebst.co.uk
For more information: william.garrison@port.ac.uk
Images, diagrams and attachments
| Caption: | Lifesign streams the BBC programme The Human Body |
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| License: | Used with permission |
