VideoDoc : combining videos and lecture notes for a better learning experience

Videos provide learners an engaging way to learn material, but they are not easy to navigate. Electronic textbooks are easy to navigate and help learners review material they have already seen, but they are not very engaging. VideoDoc combines videos and textbooks to provide learners with a single resource that engages them and is easy to navigate. The interface can be played like a video or read like a textbook. Lecture videos and their corresponding transcripts are broken into sections by topic, and each section also has screenshots of representative video frames. A user can navigate the interface by scrolling through the sections or clicking on section titles in an interactive table of contents. A VideoDoc lecture is automatically generated from a time-­‐annotated text transcript and a labeling of talking-­‐head video frames, and an instructor can fine-­‐tune section boundaries and add section titles using an editing interface. Through a user study we found that VideoDoc helped users more easily navigate lecture videos, but some users had trouble learning how to use features of the editing interface. Acknowledgements I would like to thank: • My outstanding advisor, Rob Miller, for his guidance, support, and interest. I appreciate the substantial amount of time he invested in me and this project even though I was a short-­‐term member of his research group. • Rob Miller and Elena Agapie for conceiving of the original idea of VideoDoc. • Michele Pratusevich for working alongside me this year to build the computer vision parser that provides input to VideoDoc about people and lecture material. Thank you for your quick responses to my emails requesting JSON files. • Juho Kim for offering advice and resources as I wrote my thesis proposal and designed my user study. • My roommate and fellow UID member Elena Glassman for thoughtful conversation about research and life. for playtesting VideoDoc and offering suggestions and support. • My friends and family for their support throughout this process. I would especially like to thank my parents, Lisa and Steven, and my sister, Sarah, for their endless love and support this year and always. Abstract BLOCKIN