TRANSITS/COMENT@: AN INTERACTIVE TOOL TO ANNOTATE VIDEOS

Video is a support that is every day more used not only as entertainment but also as a pedagogical resource at any level. On the other hand, video video has become a common way of interacting with internet and each other. Thus, video is nowadays a powerful tool for e-learning students.
However, one of the main drawbacks of video versus text documents, is that video is a passive resource and text documents can be edited and annotated. We could add comments next to the videos in several platforms, and in 2012, UOC published Present@, a platform that allowed virtual students to present their final degree project, and the tribunal to evaluate and make the posterior debate: the platform allowed to make comments in the same page where the video was, but not to attach any annotation to the video. On the other hand, most of word processors and pdf viewers allow to annotate documents. Why could we attach a note to a document but not to a video?

To address this lack, has evolved Present@ to a new tool called Transits/Coment@. UOC Coment@ is the true evolution of Present@ and allows to attach comments to a video in different formats: text, links, audio, vídeo and image. Thanks to the new functionalities, teachers can address their questions to students attached within the video itself, and students know exactly to which point of their video the teachers refer, providing a more natural and easy way of working. And on the other hand, it is possible to attach within a video personal comments that are not visible to everybody.

Technologically, Coment@ uses the PopCorn.js library and works as streaming using the Kaltura SAAS (Software As A Service) platform.
Transits is an application within Social Education Degree, where didactic videos get a new layer with complementary information that allows students to interact with the video and see and link extra information. Thus, videos become integrated in the ecosystem of information of the subject and are easily updated with new information.

After the success of Present@ as a pedagogical video platform, Transits/Coment@ brings the possibility to interact with videos and improve their utility as e-learning tool. The application of this resource goes further than its actual uses, such as for reviewing video-lectures, complement video-lectures or tutorials with interactive elements or improving adaptivity just by showing some embedded comments of a video according to user context.