February 2003 — Special Feature

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Streaming Technology Improves Student Achievement

By Ron Reed, President, United Learning

Study shows the use of standards-based video content, powered by a new Internet technology application, increases student achievement.

Millions of dollars have been invested in connecting schools across the nation to the Internet with the aid of E-Rate funding \f1\emdash putting computers in classrooms and improving building infrastructures. Although there is much to be accomplished before achieving the goals set forth by the E-Rate legislation, it is now time to integrate technology throughout the teaching and learning environments. An example of putting the power of technology to work is on-demand video streaming and the promise it has to offer as an instructional tool for a variety of learning experiences. Cometrika, a research firm led by Frank Boster, Ph.D., recently completed a first-of-its-kind study that incorporates standards-based video clips into lessons developed by classroom teachers.

According to "A Report on the Effect of the unitedstreaming Application on Educational Performance" (Boster et al. 2002), students who received instruction incorporating the video-on-demand unitedstreaming application showed dramatic improvement in achievement. The unitedstreaming application is a browser-based Internet delivery system with a comprehensive content management system developed by United Learning. It consists of an extensive collection of more than 1,500 videos and 15,000 chaptered clips of standards-based, core-curriculum edu-cational video, teacher's guides, student activities, quizzes and teacher resources. The control-group study of more than 1,400 elementary and middle school students in three Virginia school districts showed an average increase of 12.6% by students exposed to unitedstreaming compared to students who received traditional instruction alone.

Overcoming Barriers

While there are currently many barriers to overcome regarding the adoption of streaming video technology, there are also ways around these barriers. Consider the following:

Bandwidth limitations. Bandwidth refers to the amount of data that can be transmitted over the Internet in a fixed amount of time. For digital devices, bandwidth is usually expressed in bits per second or bytes per second. Some common examples of Internet connection speeds include dial-up modems at 56 Kilobits per second (Kbps); DSL, which can range from 128 Kbps to 8 Megabits per second (Mbps); and T-1 lines at 1.544 Mbps. The broader the bandwidth, the better quality the streaming. Many schools, libraries and other places of learning currently don't have sufficient bandwidth to support dependable video streaming; though the technology is coming.

Where bandwidth is an issue, downloading the video file is a viable option. "The quality of Internet access is critical. Broadband access will be the new standard. Slow, unreliable connections that cannot support interactivity or right multimedia content will no longer be sufficient" (Riley, Holleman and Roberts 1999). In addition, the Web-Based Education Commission recommends making "powerful new Internet resources, especially broadband access, widely and equitably available and affordable for all learners. We call on federal and state governments to make the extension of broadband access for all learners a central goal of telecommunications policy" (Kerrey and Isakson 2000).