DISTANCE LEARNING USING MULTIMEDIA VIDEO PLATFORMS AND FREE-ACCESS TEACHING-LEARNING MATERIALS

Recently it has been detected a growing interest on distance learning platforms to give support to non-presence learning activities. Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), conscious of this need has made an important effort to develop and launch different multimedia platforms useful as support for conventional (presence) teaching-learning activities and especially for distance learning (non-presence). Among these multimedia platforms, it is interesting to note the increasing interest and use of several on-line platforms such as Polimedia and publication of free access teaching material through the Open Course Ware platform at UPV.

Polimedia is a multimedia platform in which, a great amount of teaching-learning material can be deposited by teachers in a special format, called Learning Object (LO). Learning Objects can be defined as individual subject-matter that can be explained in a short video file (often lower than 10 min). The novelty of this platform is that these video files include a power point presentation synchronized with another video file in which, the teacher gives the corresponding lesson. These video files are included in a general database and all Learning Objects are classified into different categories in order to facilitate the search process. These Polimedia Learning Objects can be classified as free access for all the internet community or restricted to students or teachers of a particular subject. Our experience in using these Polimedia videos for distance learning in Materials Engineering or as support for tutorship tasks has given excellent results and our contribution to the Polimedia database is constantly increasing.

As a complement to Polimedia platform the Polytechnic University of Valencia has also developed a platform to offer free teaching-learning materials for students. This initiative has led to the development of the UPV Open Course Ware (OCW) internet portal. This allows the teacher to show all relevant information regarding the subject (theory, practical sessions, interesting links and complementary material). All these items are structured in units with folders and subfolders and all documents are free access. In our particular case, our OCW subjects offer links to Polimedia video files which can be used all together to enhance the learning process mainly for distance education. Our experience with these new and attractive multimedia platforms has been highly positive so that, we are continuously increasing multimedia materials available through these two platforms.