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| navigate: home: magazine: spring 2002: article | |
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Initiative fosters public broadcasting-university partnerships By Deborah A. Benedetti | |||||||||||||
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An alliance of public broadcasting stations and higher education institutions organized by Byron Knight in 1998 is continuing to explore opportunities for collaboration in this new era of digital technologies. Knight, director of Broadcasting and Media Innovations at the University of Wisconsin-Extension and former director of Wisconsin Public Television, pioneered Reforging the Links: Public Television and the University in the Digital Age. The project has now moved into its second phase: Evolving the Links. Evolving the Links’ goal is to continue reenergizing the link between public broadcasting and higher education to meet the growing knowledge and information needs of the public. Penn State Public Broadcasting and Washington State University and their respective continuing education, distance education and cooperative extension units have been involved with the University of Wisconsin-Extension and Wisconsin Public Television since the project’s inception. Other Evolving the Links partners are WKAR, Michigan State University; KPBS, San Diego State University; WGCU, Florida Gulf Coast University; KAMU, Texas A&M University; UNC-TV, University of North Carolina System; KUON, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; and NH-PTV, University of New Hampshire. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is supporting the project through its Future Fund. When public broadcasting stations convert to digital television technology, their channel capacity will expand dramatically. The new technology will enable broadcasters to transmit four or more digital signals using the same bandwidth that now supports a single television channel. Where will the content come from to fill these new public television channels? “The idea for Reforging the Links was to experiment with partnerships with universities for content,” Knight said. “In Evolving the Links, we are dealing with issues related to interactive media and television, broadband delivery and digital asset management. We are working to demonstrate public television can use broadband technology to share programs on computer servers, rather than on videotape. We will ultimately be able to create and edit content at a distance, using technology. We are hoping to build the technology to bring this all together.” During a 2001 meeting at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Knight illustrated the potential of digital asset management for Evolving the Links partners. He compared digital asset management systems to library card catalogues. “Just as libraries are repositories for content, where patrons can search for information on a wide variety of topics, digital technologies will give us the ability to create the equivalent repositories for digital materials,” Knight said. “Already, many continuing education and cooperative extension materials have been indexed and placed online.” The kinds of materials now available include public television videotapes, public radio audiotapes, courses, scripts, slide presentations, fact sheets, reports and much more. Why is this important? “If a faculty member begins to think about pulling information into a digital format, we’ll be able to get that information out again,” Knight said. “Another faculty member could borrow a concept within an existing program and use it to illustrate a point in another course or program.” As the technology progresses and the digital repository is formed, these materials can be made accessible from homes and offices, he added. The primary issue is finding a way to identify content objects so they are easily retrieved from a digital asset management system. “Searching the Internet can bring up thousands of references,” Knight said. “Sometimes, too much information is as bad as too little. Digital technology forces us to think about how we create, index, store and share vetted content.” Digital asset management was just one of many topics discussed during the Evolving the Links meeting at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Ted Krichels, assistant vice president for outreach and general manager of Penn State Public Broadcasting, said participants also looked at common funding agendas. “We can strengthen our cases to federal, state and other funding agencies by articulating a common agenda,” Krichels said. “By marshaling our resources from federal and state governments, corporations and foundations, we can have a measurable impact. In an increasingly competitive environment, working together can strengthen our efforts.” He cited Penn State Public Broadcasting’s Creating Health initiative as an example of how multiple Penn State groups can work collaboratively on a common agenda for funding. This initiative involves Penn State’s College of Medicine, College of Health and Human Development and College of Agricultural Sciences and the Penn State World Campus, the Division of Continuing Education and Penn State Cooperative Extension. In addition to exploring cooperative arrangements for funding projects, public broadcasters involved with the Evolving the Links project are immersed in converting their stations to digital television technology, mandated by the Federal Communications Commission to be completed by 2003. “As we are transitioning to digital broadcasting, our capacity to deliver information and programs will increase incredibly,” Krichels said. “This will give us a unique opportunity to be a bridge from higher education to the community. Universities have an incredible potential of resources. In some ways, we’re overwhelmed by the opportunities. This is an exciting time.” Dr. Theodore R. Alter, associate vice president for outreach, director of Cooperative Extension and associate dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences at Penn State, agrees with this assessment of the immense potential for public broadcasting-university partnerships. “We’re fortunate to have at Penn State and the University of Wisconsin and Washington State University a long history of outreach and strong public broadcasting stations,” Alter said. “We have people who see the vision of closer links between public broadcasting and higher education and the positive impact that linkage can have for engagement and for bringing public broadcasting more visibly to people in the viewing areas. “I believe in the digital revolution and the opportunity that affords us in higher education to reach people with entertainment and educational programming, using our educational resources,” Alter said. “This is the new frontier for cooperative extension programming.” During the Evolving the Links phase of the public broadcasting-university partnership, members are discussing technological, intellectual property, funding and cultural issues, he noted. The advent of digital asset management systems will drive cultural changes at public broadcasting stations and universities. “In cooperative extension, we are specialists in putting content together,” Alter said. “Adopting digital asset management will require a shift in our resources and changes in the way we operate. It’s a new future that affords us and all of higher education an extraordinary opportunity. I can see us operating large digital asset management systems. The customization this will allow is incredible. This places a different burden on the extension educator. It will enable educators to be self-reliant, autonomous and independent.” Dr. Gary E. Miller, associate vice president for Distance Education and executive director of the Penn State World Campus, said, “Digital technologies will have dramatic implications for both public broadcasting and distance education. When we create program materials with faculty, we’ll be creating digital objects.” For example, a public broadcasting program could be turned into digital objects for use in a course or in many other ways. “We need consistent standards and technologies for this to work,” Miller added. The benefits will be important for faculty members. As public broadcasting stations and universities create a digital asset management system, faculty members will have increased access to resources and assistance in using these resources for the benefit of their students, he said. There are policy and funding issues to consider, as well as issues of how to get university delivery units working together to serve students and the public. Will there be one national digital asset management system or many such systems? Miller said we need a common digital asset management format to share knowledge. “In the broader context, technological change is affecting the entire institution,” Miller said. “What we’re doing in Evolving the Links will have an impact on how faculty members teach, how students learn and how the institution engages with the public. This is just the tip of a large iceberg.” Dr. Kevin P. Reilly, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Extension, sees great potential in the Evolving the Links project. “Reforging the Links was the initial conversation about why public broadcasting stations should consider coming back to their educational mission with their university,” Reilly said. “Over the years, public broadcasting stations had drifted away from seeing themselves as having an educational mission with their university. They saw themselves more as community and nonprofit entities.” Reilly added, “The next step in the Evolving the Links project is to determine precisely how public broadcasting stations and universities can partner to use the new digital educational medium of public television, which has the potential for enormous reach and impact over the entire globe.” When public broadcasters and universities partner on outreach projects, they will be able to approach federal and state governments, corporations and foundations with a single proposal for funding. This is an important aspect of the Evolving the Links project, Reilly said. For Dennis L. Haarsager, associate vice president and general manager of Educational Telecommunications and Technology at the Washington State University, another key aspect of Evolving the Links is the opportunities the project provides for public broadcasters to share their best practices. “The project gives us access to what other institutions are doing,” Haarsager said. “We can learn from each others’ experiences and identify ways to strengthen our mutual activities.” Perhaps the most valuable lesson learned as a member of Reforging the Links and Evolving the Links is “public broadcasting stations can have productive relationships in the university environment in a variety of ways,” Haarsager said. “We need to view our public broadcasting stations as an integral part of the university. Being seen as a valuable part of the university will strengthen our case for funding from the university.” Funding is a key issue for all Evolving the Links partners, especially as they explore the potential of digital technologies and new partnerships. These activities are taking place as many higher education institutions are renewing and expanding their connections with their communities and individuals and organizations around the United States and throughout the world. In this environment, public broadcasting-university partnerships have never been more essential. A 1999 report from the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Institutions titled Returning to Our Roots: A Learning Society reinforces the goals of the Evolving the Links project. The report notes, “A flood of information from a bewildering variety of sources threatens to overwhelm our senses and overcome our ability to interpret, integrate and use it. In contrast to this overabundance of raw, partial, outdated or biased information is the scarcity and prized status of knowledge.” In an address to public broadcasters and educators, President Graham Spanier, said, “As we enter the Age of Digital Media, with its potential to enhance our already high-quality public broadcasting content with new multicast and multichannel capabilities, I am hopeful that we see public policymakers and leaders from the public service media, public universities and other public institutions sitting together to explore areas of common ground upon which we can create effective and responsive systems for learning and disseminating knowledge and creating two-way interaction.” Evolving the Links partners share this goal. They are building new public broadcasting-university partnerships to help people make sense of the “flood of information” surrounding us all. | ||||||||||||
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