PanteionTube: Impact Story
Summary of the idea:
PanteionTube is an online platform, where videos of AD & PR Lab lectures will be uploaded.
It is a known fact that many students have a hectic lifestyle. Some of them work, others have extracurricular activities like, learning foreign languages or participating in seminars in order to enhance their CV. However, even students who do not have that many responsibilities, might get sick or be unable to attend a class due to a strike in the public transportation. When creating our project, we also took under consideration students who are acoustic learners or who have missed writing down some of the tutor’s material about the subject. In addition, the majority of the professors teach their subject based on their personal notes and not based on the book students receive. Hence, if the students are not capable of attending these classes they might not be able to pass those subjects.
These issues affect a huge portion of the students who study in our university; however, the benefits of this site would be notable also to AD & PR Lab professors’. Their lectures will no more be dependable from the amount of students being physically present in the class or by the university’s “take-overs”. Tutors will be able to upload the lectures even from their home and to organize from the beginning of the semester the courses’ material.
Every lecture will be documented and then published at PanteionTube. In order to film the classes, cameras will be placed in AD & PR Lab’s classroom near the professor and the board. What is more, professors will have microphones to ensure the clear sound and audio of the videos.
The site’s structure will be extremely easy. When the students enter for the first time the site, they will have to create a profile. They will write their name, e-mail and the number of their student’s ID, in order to be verified as students of the university. Then, they will choose their major and the lessons they want to be kept up to date. They will be able to add and remove lessons whenever they want. What is more, notifications will be sent in their e-mails when new videos of their chosen subjects are uploaded. Videos of the lectures will be online within one week from the date of the lecture, so the content between the classes is not missed.
Visual explanation of the idea:
Learnings:
As a team, we noticed that all the members were excited about PanteionTube as, one way or another, each of us has missed lectures because of sickness, inability to go to the university with public transport, or having to work. Therefore, the idea was also embraced by the tutors who expressed that they had also thought about having an online session for AD & PR Lab students.
What is next?
We want to bring this idea to life; however, a great amount of fund is needed in order to achieve it. As an experiment of our idea, a pilot page would be created where, for the first steps, only one class of AD &PR LAB would be able to connect, and the tutors would be able to upload videos only for that specific lessons. The experimental period would last one semester and after the end of it, we would conduct a research based on how many students used PanteionTube and whether there was a difference in the average score of students’ finals with the previous examinations. If results are positive, university should invest money for up to date equipment, create a proper website for PanteionTube and hire special technicians whose job will be to make sure that video and audio are synchronized correctly and to upload videos every week.
Activation of the community:
For a successful implementation, collaboration with many specialists is needed. Firstly, it is essential for the Dean of Panteion University and for the professors to agree that this platform can actually be created. Moreover, all the professors must agree to be filmed during their lectures, and if any university lecturers do not consent to be documented, then, only their voice could be recorded. Therefore, the site will have a podcast format too. However, we hope that every single professor will agree to be filmed because we believe a video format might appeal more to the students.
After the agreement of the university faculty, the actual project will take place. As said previously, the proper equipment is necessary like, high quality cameras and microphones, in order for the videos to be smooth to watch.
Furthermore, special technicians will be required in order to create a proper website. The platform has to be easy to use, so students will be able to find anything they want effortlessly. In addition, a video editor will be responsible to synchronize the audio with the visual part of the video. Last but not least, funding by the government is crucial. Without it, it is almost impossible to bring this idea to life. For this reason, AD & PR Lab’s tutors should contact the Ministry of Education and inform them about our idea.
Important skills:
PanteionTube is not a project that needs an extreme number of employees and specialists in order to operate. However, there are some professionals that would be helpful, such as, a web developer in order to create an easy to use site for all.
Moreover, having video editors is very important since our platform will host basically videos of the lectures. Therefore, a good number of editors are wanted because Panteion University has quite many majors, and each major has a huge number of classes in each semester.
In addition, a project manager would benefit our idea as every project would have someone who would be responsible for organizing everything that must be done in order for the project to work. So, in our case a project manager would be responsible to make a plan about the exact day of each video upload.
Finally yet importantly, our project would welcome a specialist to keep up to date and evaluate the statistics of our platform. Knowing the number of the views of each lecture and the overall percentage of the students who use the PanteionTube would help us to decide whether changes should happen in the platform or in the videos.
Konstantina Angelidou, Grasiela Varkari, Ina Makrydaki, Katerina Somi, Margie Kam, Myrto Galanopoulou
