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Getting Started in CIS 771

Getting Started

Attending The First Lecture:

All on-campus students should attend the first lecture to be held 9:30 am - 10:45 am in Nichols 122 on Thursday, January 17. The lecture slides and video are posted on the Lectures page for off-campus students to view.

Initial Instructor Contact for Off-Campus Students

During the week of January 21-25, the instructors will be arranging telephone calls to off-campus students. The purpose of these phone calls is to answer any questions off-campus students may have after they have watched the initial lecture on course administration and have read all the information in the Course Syllabus and Advice & History sections.

Course Communication and E-Mail Lists

The primary means of communicating announcements from instructors to student will be via email. Initial announcements will be sent through K-State Online's course roster email facility. Thus, initial announcements will arrive at whatever email address you have registered with K-State Online. Shortly after the course begins, instructions will be given for registering for a more featureful email list facility.

Online Lecture Technology

Previously, on-line lectures will created and viewed using technology from Tegrity. However, this semester we will experiment with ProfCast pod-casting technology.

  • Tegrity: -- proprietary audio/video format viable on Java-based browser plug-in
    • PROS: Displays video of instructor talking along with audio synced with slide transition; allows instructors to use touch screen to place annotations on slides.
    • CONS: Takes longer to set up and process multi-media artifacts when recording lecture; can only be recorded on special hardware housed at CIS department; requires Java-based browser plug-in that only works on certain browsers; playback is limited to computer based browsers (does not extended to MP3 players); files containing lectures are bigger and require more storage space.
    Integrity browser plug-in installation will begin when first Tegrity file is loaded. Tegrity works best in Internet Explorer on Windows and Safari on Mac OS X.

  • Prof Cast: - enhanced audio files (.m4a, .m4b) include album art that contains images of slides; allows audio playback with slides in iTunes and iPods and audio only in any MP3 player that recognizes .m4a and .m4b formats.
    • PROS: Easy recording and distribution, with RSS distribution capability; can be recorded anywhere instructor has laptop; playback platforms (iTunes, iPods) more widely available files containing lectures are smaller and require less storage space; files can be edited in Apple Garage Band.
    • CONS: Does not display video of instructor (only audio); does not allow use of touch screen to place annotations on slides.
    To view podcast lectures, carry out the following steps:
    • download and install the latest version of iTunes
    • at a link for a podcast lecture on the Lectures page, right-click on the link and invoke the appropriate command to download the .m4a file to your machine (typically the menu option is something like "Save target as.." or "Save linked file as..."). If you happen to left-click (open) the link directly, you may see the lecture play in a Quicktime browser plug-in, but the images for the slides may be too small for effective viewing.
    • once the .m4a file is downloaded, make sure the m4a extension is associated with iTunes or some other media player that allows viewing of "album art"
    • double click on the .m4a file to launch iTunes (as a side effect, the .m4a will be loaded into your iTunes library). Alternatively, explicitly import or open the file from inside of iTunes or your media viewer
    • enable displaying of album art in iTunes by selecting Show Album Art from the View menu.
    • double-click on the album art image (the album art displays a PowerPoint slide from the lecture) to bring up a large-size image. The View menu will allow you to adjust the size of the image (half size, actual size, etc.)