Contribute Article

Since its inception as a document distribution medium, the Internet has been limited to a publish-and-read mentality. This meant that everyone with a computer could become a content publisher but, up until recently, web users have had very few ways to interact with or respond to the online content they read. The development of web applications—including e-commerce and e-learning applications, as well as content management systems—have made improvements to the publish-and-read model. Online applications allow web users to interact with published content. However, current methods of interaction are often highly structured, limiting user response.

Giving voice to the learners
It is ironic that as the Internet hype in the media dies down, two new developments are revolutionizing the ways large institutions are using the web. The emergence of data and data transfer standards, which enable machines (such as data servers) to communicate with other machines, connect not merely information, but entire web services. Thanks to these web services, you can now connect human resources, registration, accounting, timekeeping, and a myriad of other administrative systems to all feed into each other.

The second development, and more immediately interesting for educators, is the emergence of technologies that enable robust communication via the web, without yesteryear’s requirements for complex or expensive authoring tools and mastery of confusing (and ever-changing) technologies.

In 2002, Macromedia released a one-two punch in the area of web communications, with the potential to change the face of distance learning.

Why is this so exciting? Online learning has had an Achilles heel for years: while educators could get content onto the web easily enough, it has been nearly impossible to provide anything comparable to the classroom experience online. Classroom experience is not limited to providing information (in the form of readings or lectures), but also includes discussions, collaboration, question-and-answer, self-expression, experimentation, and engaging as a group with the learning content. Because the web favored content dissemination over human collaboration, creating an engaging learning experience was out of the reach of all but the most dedicated (and well funded) institutions. Not anymore.

Synchronous learning using Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX
The Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX ships with a number of components that facilitate a broad variety of synchronous communication. As mentioned before, all that the client needs is a copy of Macromedia Flash 6 player, which is a free download that takes under two minutes on a dial-up connection.

Those not familiar with Macromedia Flash MX may not be familiar with components. Components are ready-made, fully functional interface elements. To use them, you can simply drag and drop them from the Macromedia Flash Library into an active Flash document.

After adding interface components, there are just a few more steps to customize interface elements by setting parameters and entering a few lines of simple code. Most Flash components take literally minutes for an experienced Flash developer to deploy. Figure 1 displays a screen shot of a sample application that was created using Flash interface components.

Clearly, this is a powerful set of communication applications. But it gets better. These can all be deployed from within a single site, and can be viewed using Macromedia Flash Player. Users no longer have to switch from one communications application to another, and developers can create a consistent design and interface.

Prior to Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX, students in a course might use an ad hoc mixture of e-mail, content management systems, messaging software, and so on to communicate with the instructor and other classmates. This approach is less than optimal, because it requires students to run various applications simultaneously. Additionally, each application uses different interfaces, menus, and looks. Such a mélange of technologies not only undermines consistency of experience; it also disjoints communication. Discussions that take place between users in one format could not interact with relevant discussions in another format.

With Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX, a single application interface can be developed with different communication applications deployed from the same site. That means that users can visit a single website, where several forms of communication take place in a similar environment.

The benefit of using Macromedia Flash MX in this way extends beyond communications. Remember, Macromedia Flash MX is a powerful multimedia authoring tool ideal for creating e-learning applications, as Jeffrey demonstrated in Macromedia MX eLearning: Advanced Training From the Source. In other words, faculty and instructors can deploy Flash communications alongside rich learning media in Macromedia Flash MX, again, using a single environment for both authoring and for the client.

In addition to Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX, Macromedia also recently released Flash Remoting, which enables developers to connect Flash directly to web applications, servers, and business logic. To do so, it hooks into the current web services and applications standards, such as XML and SOAP. In practical terms, this means you can accomplish such feats as connecting Flash applications directly to course registration, ensuring that only users who've registered and paid for a course can access that course's Flash applications.

In short, the Macromedia Flash Player now offers a comprehensive client for a broad variety of rich, interactive, and collaborative learning spaces and media.

Asynchronous collaborative learning using Macromedia Contribute
While it would not be accurate to characterize Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX as a synchronous communication tool, since it has persistent, asynchronous tools as well, the majority of its components are geared to collaboration between two or more people at the same time. Asynchronous communication—that is, communication between participants who are not interacting at the same time—has long been limited to e-mail and threaded discussions.

Both e-mail and threaded discussions (using forum software or newsgroups) suffer from the same problems as the myriad of other communication technologies that are often thrown together in courses: they take place in different locations using different interfaces.

The most commonly used medium for asynchronous communication is e-mail, and it has a number of problems and limitations for collaborative learning. E-mail messages have a way of getting lost, especially when the quantity escalates. While it is possible to archive e-mail messages, most users don't. In addition, it is easy to inadvertently exclude people from conversations in e-mail. A conversation between two people might start at one point, and evolve to a point where others would benefit, but they have been excluded thus far.

Neither e-mail nor threaded discussions enable users to collaborate directly on shared documents. You can e-mail an attachment back and forth, of course, but this lends itself to catastrophic versioning problems, especially in large group situations. If all of the users have access to a given server, then they can map network drives, but in practice this approach results in all sorts of problems, requiring significant technical support resources and plenty of patience from all parties.

The release of Macromedia Contribute offers a simple and powerful solution to all of these problems and more. Originally conceived as a simple web content authoring tool for non-technical business users, Contribute users are discovering another use for it that has never been practical before: Contribute enables a large group of non-technical participants to collaborate on a shared project. In other words, not only does Contribute excel as a tool for updating publicly available web pages, it also enables non-technical users to share hyperspace, collaborating on documents through a browser-like editor from anywhere in the world.

Contribute makes this possible with its unique Connections tool. A site administrator creates a file with all of the information sufficient to connect a user to a web server (network or FTP information, host directories, authentication credentials, and so on). The site administrator sends a connection file to each user, who simply double-clicks the file. Instantly Contribute is configured to enable the user to browse the site and edit its pages in a graphic environment. From the user's standpoint, Contribute offers the ease and convenience of an interface similar to Microsoft Word or other text editors.

The implication of this is that a group can put collaborative documents on a web server, and any member of the group can work on any of those pages from anywhere in the world, at any time. A file check in system prevents two users from modifying a page simultaneously, to ensure that one user doesn't overwrite another user's work.

Indeed, to facilitate this workflow, Contribute comes with a number of built-in templates, including generic pages for business sites, such as pages with tables and lists; collaboration pages, including project home pages (with contact and timeline information), meeting notes, online presentation slides, and reports; as well as editable calendars, and more. Contribute understands and respects Dreamweaver Template (*.dwt) files, which means faculty (perhaps in consultation with IT staff) can create custom collaboration page templates, and course participants can take over from there. Needless to say, Contribute enables users to create pages from scratch, add text and images, tables, links, Macromedia Flash movies (SWFs), and other common web elements.

Working on files directly in a safe, comfortable graphic environment empowers participants to express themselves more naturally and fully than content management systems. And while Contribute is not a free product ($79/copy for education, volume discounts available), it is a much less expensive solution than a content management system.

As a final note, Contribute was built to work with Dreamweaver, which means that if some users have Dreamweaver or desire its more powerful web editing features, they can use Dreamweaver while working on a Contribute site.

Creating a comprehensive learning space using Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX and Contribute
The promise of these technologies, again, is not merely what they can do on their own (impressive as that is), but the real promise is that they can all be deployed together to create a single, one-stop, powerful learning space. Though many distance learning sites today have learning spaces, they tend to specialize in administrative content, such as syllabi, office hours, assignment descriptions, and online testing. What they too often lack is space where actual learning can take place.

The accompanying figure shows a model of a rich learning space that makes full use of Contribute and Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX. Notice that the admin and testing sections are at either extreme, representing the fact that many of today's learning spaces have a great gap in the middle, where all the learning happens.

Different implementations of learning spaces will vary greatly. But the point of this diagram is to show that it is now possible—and even relatively easy—to create spaces that enable the most powerful forms of learning: learning that gives students the opportunity to interact (rather than just receive) the material in a collaborative environment.

In addition to the intrinsic advantages of a learning space such as the one described, a learning space that is clearly more pedagogically powerful and flexible than the best content management system, such a model has two other key advantages: once built, such a space is easy to replicate throughout the university, and each space is scaleable, capable of handling anywhere from half a dozen graduate students to a 300-student freshman lecture class.

Another benefit to this approach is that the structure and much of the setup work of the faculty is recyclable. In other words, once developed, a course should work for several semesters, barring major changes in the field. In other words, a course on medieval literature, once deployed, could run for years, although a course in Chemistry or Computer Science may not have quite the same life cycle.

In the early days of the web, saying something meaningful online meant publishing content—a formalized and often elaborate process which involved graphic design, document markup, and publishing. To be sure, a substantial portion of the web will always be about that. But a rising use of the web is to empower people using the web to talk back, to respond, to converse, and to learn—without going through the formalized ritual of "publishing." In a word, the metaphor of communicating on the web as "publishing" is increasingly narrow and even obsolete.

Tools such as Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX and Contribute are changing the way we teach, the way we learn, and the way we collaborate. In the process, we are not only finding new, revolutionary ways to educate our students; as we face these new challenges and opportunities, we are also achieving new kinds of professional fulfillment for ourselves. The end result is that we are forming learning communities, in the richest, and most meaningful sense of the term.

Jeffrey Bardzell is an IT trainer, curriculum developer, and multimedia instructional designer in the IT Training and Education department within University Information Technology Services at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he is a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature. He has authored numerous computer books, including Macromedia MX eLearning: Advanced Training from the Source (Macromedia Press); Special Edition Using Fireworks MX (Que); and Macromedia Dreamweaver MX Dynamic Applications: Advanced Training from the Source (Macromedia Press). He also coauthored Mastering Macromedia Contribute (John Wiley & Sons) and Fireworks 4 Expert Edge (Osborne). Jeffrey is also a cofounder of Phireworx, a site devoted to Macromedia Fireworks extensibility, and a regular participant in Macromedia forums.