Browsing by Subject "Multimedia"

Now showing 1 - 11 of 11
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    Activity retrieval in closed captioned videos
    (2009-08) Gupta, Sonal; Mooney, Raymond J. (Raymond Joseph); Grauman, Kristen
    Recognizing activities in real-world videos is a difficult problem exacerbated by background clutter, changes in camera angle & zoom, occlusion and rapid camera movements. Large corpora of labeled videos can be used to train automated activity recognition systems, but this requires expensive human labor and time. This thesis explores how closed captions that naturally accompany many videos can act as weak supervision that allows automatically collecting 'labeled' data for activity recognition. We show that such an approach can improve activity retrieval in soccer videos. Our system requires no manual labeling of video clips and needs minimal human supervision. We also present a novel caption classifier that uses additional linguistic information to determine whether a specific comment refers to an ongoing activity. We demonstrate that combining linguistic analysis and automatically trained activity recognizers can significantly improve the precision of video retrieval.
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    Austin media in the digital age
    (2012-05) Gomez-Garcia, Oscar David; Gil de Zúñiga, Homero; Alves, Rosental C.
    This report first explores the changes journalism is experiencing since the advent of the Internet in a broad manner. Second, and more specifically, it aims to shed more light on the mechanisms that are used by the very diverse Austin-area range of outlets and journalistic corporations, and the way they are embracing and adopting new technologies. To that end, it also tries to analyze the current Austin media ecosystem in depth, focusing on some of the most representative local media outlets and interviewing some of the more relevant personalities that are making all of these changes feasible.
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    The Corticospinal and CorticobulbarTracts: an Animated Three-Dimensional Instructional Aid
    (2004-08-19) Mehdibeigi, Roshanak; Calver, Lewis E.
    The complex pathways of the neural tracts, from the cerebral cortex, through the complex anatomy of the brainstem, can be difficult for medical students to visualize and challenging for instructors to convey. Text references, 2-dimensional illustrations, and anatomical crosssectional photographs have been the most useful teaching aids available for the lecture room. Although this material is fundamentally useful, medical students often find them ineffective for comprehending the 3-dimensional aspect of the subject. Based on the success of the first animated neural tract by Chris Akers in his thesis project The Spinothalamic Tract: An Animated 3-dimensional Instructional Aid (Akers, 2003), the goal of this project was to continue assisting instructors in teaching the concepts of the corticospinal and corticobulbar tracts by producing a digitally animated, 3-dimensional instructional aid. An animation of this nature and content will be a valuable addition to the existing study material available to medical students.
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    Evaluation of web-based safety training against the instructor-led classroom training method
    (Texas A&M University, 2006-04-12) Telekepalli, Sai Srinivas M.
    The development of the Internet and the technological advancements in multimedia are some of the breakthroughs the 21st century has witnessed. Innovative ways are being sought for the application of technologies such as the Internet and multimedia, for the development of effective learning methods. The potential for using the Internet in combination with multimedia for teaching and learning is great; we are only beginning to understand and use the advantages it can offer. Web-Based safety training is an innovative self-paced learning aid which provides distinctive advantages over the traditional, instructor-led classroom training. This study provides an in-depth evaluation of Web-based safety training against instructor-led classroom training. The Web-based safety training uses multimedia such as power point slides with text, images and video clips. This study is designed as an experiment to determine the relative improvement in knowledge of woodshop safety when Web-based safety training is used against instructor-led classroom training. An opinion survey is conducted to determine participant??s attitude towards the training methods.
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    Fear & faith in Texas
    (2011-05) Vaughn, Casey L.; Coleman, Renita; Alves, Rosental C.
    Fear and faith in Texas is a multimedia journalism report about Islam in Texas. Islam has gained significant media attention recently so it is important to know more about a religion that has a growing congregation in the United States. This project answers questions like "What are the basics of the religion?" "Is it really such a foreign concept, or is it grounded in concepts and history familiar to non-Muslims?" Getting to know and break down the barriers that keep stereotypes alive and misconceptions thriving is an important part to understanding Islam. Fear and faith in Texas highlights the truth about Islam and Muslim Americans that often is ignored due to fear and a lack of knowledge. The project incorporates text, video, interactive graphics and other visual aids to give background on the religion of Islam, Muslim Americans, and show the role education plays in communicating information about religion in Texas.
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    Grand Central for chamber orchestra, live audio processing, and video projections
    (2012-05) Dicke, Ian James; Welcher, Dan; Pinkston, Russell; Sharlat, Yevgeniy; Freeman, Robert; O'Hare, Tom
    Grand Central is a twenty-minute multi-media work for chamber orchestra, live audio processing, and video projections. The piece was commissioned by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's New Music Ensemble, and will be premiered in March 2013. Composing a multi-media work poses many challenges, including the methodology of how to work with diverse components, the interplay between these elements, and how to best utilize the performance space to its full potential. The work is inspired by my experiences at Grand Central Terminal during my childhood and the musical material is derived from the building’s infrastructure and rich cultural history. The first chapter of this treatise examines the genesis of the composition, Grand Central’s history, and technical considerations related to the integration of technology, orchestration, and staging. The second chapter is encompassed by a thorough movement- by-movement analysis, complete with explanations of pitch derivation, formal principals, and programmatic considerations.
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    Multimedia learning: Cognitive individual differences and display design techniques predict transfer learning with multimedia learning modules
    (2005-05) Stalcup, Katherine A. A.; Maki, William S.; DeLucia, Patricia R.; Reich, Darcy A.; Bleckley, M. Kathryn; Durso, Francis T.
    Psychologists and engineers continue to debate the efficacy of technology interfaces and merit of information display approaches. In the wake of the information explosion and rapidly progressing technology, Mayer (2001) formulated a theory that focused on human cognition, rather than technology capacity and features. Mayer and colleagues have developed a simple model, the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning, suggesting that certain combinations of multimedia optimize learning, in terms of retention and transfer. The present dissertation suggests that the conclusions are premature and a much more complex set of individual differences and display design principles must be evaluated. Further, the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning is vulnerable in terms of its simplistic view of information processing and working memory. For instance, when previous research tested individual difference attributes, such as spatial ability and prior knowledge, performance was evaluated only in the animation and narration condition, representing one of his three initial experimental conditions (Mayer, 2001). The present research offers a rigorous comparative analysis of the multimedia conditions. In addition, variables such as working memory, multimedia comprehension skill, and fluid intelligence are measured and isolated, so that the multimedia combination effect on transfer learning can be evaluated beyond these cognitive abilities. By measuring the effect of cognitive individual differences and display design manipulations on transfer test performance, the current research offers a broader approach to testing the impact of multimedia combinations on transfer test performance. The present research concludes that while cognitive primitives contribute to learning transfer in a multimedia lesson, display design manipulations involving text location and the absence of motion remove the effects reported in previous research. Ultimately, there is no “magic bullet” combination of multimedia (animation and narration). Rather, key design principles coupled with the influence of cognitive individual differences must be investigated further before prescriptive guidelines for educational multimedia can be proffered. Likewise, the predictive validity of cognitive primitives, such as fluid intelligence, may redirect interest back to fundamental individual differences, as indicators of learning differences with or without the effect of technology.
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    Multimedia-enhanced developmental mathematics for postsecondary culturally diverse students
    (2015-12) Belfi, Marcie Merinda; Bryant, Diane Pedrotty; Bryant, Brian R; Sorrells, Audrey M; Powell, Sarah R; Liu, Min
    Students who are not ready for college must take developmental courses, predominately in math more than reading or writing, because of the need to pass high school algebra as a prerequisite to gain entrance to college. Students who take developmental courses are predominately from minority ethnic backgrounds or from low- income families. These students often have documented learning disabilities (LD) or have been overlooked by the education system. The use of multimedia in the classroom can offer these students various methods for learning, as well as individualized instruction. The present study compares a multimedia-enhanced (MME) developmental mathematics course that has a mandatory attendance requirement to a course that teaches the same curriculum in a lecture-based format. A mixed-methods comparative analysis pretest posttest quasi-experimental design was used to compare student performance on a posttest and final exam between students taught in the MME section and students taught in the lecture-based section. A course survey was conducted to compare student satisfaction between the two conditions. Interviews were conducted to gather students’ perceptions of the barriers and facilitators to learning in both conditions, as well as to determine students’ past experiences with mathematics learning and their dispositions towards mathematics learning in general. The results showed that there were no statistically significant differences in student performance on the posttest and final exam between the students taught in the MME section and the students taught in the lecture-based section. There was no statistically significant difference in student satisfaction between the two sections. The barriers included the short amount of time for the summer course and lack of technology skills. The facilitators included: (a) helpful instructor, (b) supplementary videos provided by faculty member, (c) collaboration with peers, (d) examples in the software showing how to work the problems, (e) step-by-step instructions, (f) portability of the course, (g) ability to print from the lab, (h) working in the lab, (i) working at own pace, (j) access to the textbook online, and (k) opportunities for practice. These results are discussed in further detail and implications for practice and further research are also considered.
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    Optimizing mobile multimedia content delivery
    (2013-08) Seung, Yousuk; Zhang, Yin, doctor of computer science
    With the advent of mobile Internet the amount of time people spend with multimedia applications in the mobile environment is surging and demand for high quality multimedia data over the Internet in the mobile environment is growing rapidly. However the mobile environment is significantly more unfriendly than the wired environment for multimedia applications in many ways. Network resources are limited and the condition is harder to predict. Also multimedia applications are generally delay intolerant and bandwidth demanding, and with users moving, their demand could be much more dynamic and harder to anticipate. Due to such reasons many existing mobile multimedia applications show unsatisfactory performance in the mobile environment. We target three multimedia content delivery applications and optimize with limited and unpredictable network conditions typical in the mobile Internet environment. Vehicular networks have emerged from the strong desire to communicate on the move. We explore the potential of supporting high-bandwidth applications such as video streaming in vehicular networks. Challenges include limited and expensive cellular network, etc. Internet video conferencing has become popular over the past few years, but supporting high-quality large video conferences at a low cost remains a significant challenge due to stringent performance requirements, limited and heterogeneous client. We develop a simple yet effective Valiant multicast routing to select application-layer routes and adapt streaming rates according to dynamically changing network condition in a swift and lightweight way enough to be implemented on mobile devices. Bitrate adaptive video streaming is rapidly gaining popularity. However recent measurements show weaknesses in bitrate selection strategies implemented in today's streaming players especially in the mobile environment. We propose a novel rate adaptation scheme that classifies the network condition into stable and unstable periods and optimizes video quality with different strategies based on the classification.
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    The student's experience of multimodal assignments : play, learning, and visual thinking
    (2012-12) Nahas, Lauren Mitchell; Faigley, Lester, 1947-; Roberts-Miller, Patricia; Syverson, Margaret; Hodgson, Justin; Pena, Jorge
    Much of current pedagogical discussion of the use of multimodal assignments in the writing classroom argues that one benefit of such assignments is that they foster student engagement, innovation, and creativity while simultaneously teaching writing and argumentation concepts. Although such discussions rarely use the term “play,” play theorists consider engagement, innovation, creativity, and learning to be central characteristics and outcomes of play. Thus, what many scholars view as a major outcome of multimodal assignments might most accurately be described as playful learning. In order to investigate the validity of claims that playful learning is a product of multimodal assignments, this dissertation reports on the results of a comparative case study of four different classrooms that used multimodal assignments. The objective of the study was to better understand the students’ experience of these assignments because the students’ perspective is only represented anecdotally in the literature. The study’s research questions asked: Do students find these assignments to be playful, creative, or engaging experiences? Do they view these assignments as related to and supportive of the more traditional goals of the course? And what role does the visual nature of these technologies have in the student’s experience of using them or in their pedagogical effectiveness? Each case was composed of a different writing course, a different assignment, and a different multimodal computer technology. The results of the study show that students generally did find these assignments both enjoyable and useful in terms of the learning goals of the course. Many students even went so far as to describe them as fun, indicating that for some students these were playful experiences in the traditional sense. However, comparison of the results of each case illustrates that the simple injection of a multimodal assignment into the classroom will not necessarily create a playful learning experience for students. The students’ experience is a complex phenomenon that is impacted by the structure of the assignment, whether or not they are provided a space for exploration and experimentation, their attitude towards the technology, and the characteristics of the technology.
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    A visual-verbal agenda : the interaction of news stories and photographs on second-level agenda setting
    (2014-05) Yaschur, Carolyn J.; Coleman, Renita
    This research explores the second-level agenda-setting effects of news photographs and news stories, separately and when presented together. The tone of photos and stories each independently influence public opinion on an affective level. Negative stories and photographs elicited negative opinions and emotions about the issue presented, while positive responses resulted from positive stories and photographs. When congruently toned stories and photos were presented together their affective agenda-setting effects were amplified. Positive stories paired with positive photos created stronger positive affect than negative stories and photos, which precipitated a strong negative response. However, because of the negativity bias, no significant differences were found between negative stories paired with negative photos and negative stories with positive photos. Audiences felt negative, regardless of the valence of the photo. When stories and photos were of incongruent tone, the audience's opinion about the issue followed the tone of the story. Findings from this study also confirmed that need for orientation was not a component of second-level agenda setting. However, a relationship was established between need for orientation and elaboration. Those with high need for orientation were more likely to process the information deeply than those with low need for orientation, thereby drawing ties between agenda-setting theory and the Elaboration Likelihood Model.