Cdigix Overview for EDUCAUSE Live

1. Cdigix Overview for EDUCAUSE Live Chuck Powell Director, Academic Media & Technology, ITS Yale University Charles.Powell@Yale.edu September 15, 2004

2. What We Set Out to Do • First, to determine whether Cdigix could add value to the process of delivering educational materials to students over the campus network (primarily video). Several units on campus, including ITS, were already performing this function (for example classes.yale.edu) but the goal was to make it easier and more cost effective for the institution. • Second, to provide optional subscription entertainment services to students (and faculty and staff as appropriate). This would include both music and video offerings. This part of the pilot would gauge student response to the service both at the technical level and for general sufficiency.

3. Why These Goals? • Internal initiative for efficiency on the educational side – deliver more media at a lower unit cost, make the process a simple turnkey process for faculty • Reduce demand for traditional media delivery methods such as the evening screening • Meet growing demands for media usage and teaching benefits • Secondary benefit of encouraging students to do the right thing with regards to intellectual property and test whether “you can compete with free” • Immature market and models but important to test • Test needs to reflect behavior -- not just what students say they would do • Avoid equity and distribution challenges in a heterogeneous population

4. Key Features • Educational services had to be available to all students, entertainment services should be available to all • Easy for faculty to make use of the service • Lots of options for students to choose from: • Opt in • Catalog size • Subscribe and/or permanent “buy” • Tight integration with campus infrastructure for authentication, authorization, privacy, and course rosters • Preserve campus internet connection bandwidth

5. Results to date • Educational piece (Clabs) a success with explosive growth from semester to semester and some growing pains • Too early to tell on the entertainment side -- this semester will be the true test

6. Some Details -- Technology • Cdigix is integrated with Yale’s Central Authentication System (http://www.yale.edu/tp/cas), Shibboleth will also be an option • Ecommerce costs are non-trivial over a large number of transactions and we’re still working the details between us and the vendor • Cdigix servers are in our machine room(s) but solely owned, operated and serviced by Cdigix • The Ctrax service is provided straight through the browser (MSIE only) with no client side software other than plug-ins. Music is played via Windows Media Player [DRM constraint] • Educational services (Clabs) are delivered via any modern browser and Realplayer to Windows, Mac and soon Unix/Linux. • Local feeds from Banner and our course management system to keep course rosters for access synched. • Clabs currently has no “catalog” of educational materials we provide the materials locally from the Film Study Center or Library

7. Some Details -- Financial • Services (educational and entertainment) are separately priced • Music monthly subscription cost = $2.95 • Music permanent download = $.89 • Movie monthly subscription = $12.95 • Movie pay per view $1.99 to $3.99 • Educational services paid for out of “my” GA budget so no cost to students and faculty. • Exact cost under non-disclosure • We’re satisfied that it’s cheaper than I can buy the hardware, software and staff it myself

8. Some Details -- Usage • Clabs service used by ~30 faculty & ~500 students last semester • Over 200 hours of material • Estimate is we’ll double that this semester • Video entertainment (Cflix) content has been limited so far leading to low usage • Music service (Ctrax) has only been in final beta testing so no hard core usage data to date

9. Some Details -- Outcomes • Students and faculty have been very receptive to the educational components • Several faculty have provided strong anecdotal evidence of the value to teaching and learning • Students appreciate the “ease of use” and the asynchronous & ubiquitous nature of the service. It’s bound neither by traditional hours nor traditional network topology • Biggest complaints and service issues to date: • Lack of Mac support (we believe is fixed) • Older computer hardware is challenged in a variety of ways to “keep up” (we provide general purpose computer labs)

10. Lessons Learned • Cdigix is a young company, very flexible but with growing pains • We’re close to accomplishing our goal of being able to call the educational service a complete “turnkey” solution for our needs • We think Ctrax and Cflix are great entertainment choices for our students but the jury is still out on: • How the overall market will shake out and evolve • Student adoption rate (real behavioral evidence needed) • Impact (if any) on inappropriate file-sharing • It’s definitely caveat emptor out there with the vendors • Clearly they are each staking out their niche(s) • Don’t expect the answer you get from a vendor as necessarily the same as what another school would get • Answers are changing almost daily even from the same vendor

11. Lessons Learned (cont’d) • Our intuition is no single commercial vendor offering is going to make all students completely happy • Not every artist is available • Nuanced differences in catalog offerings • Platform, device and standards inter-operability challenges abound • Education on the issues, responsibilities and rationale is still needed. We’re still trying to “defend” the principles of “fair use” as well as “protect” intellectual property – a tough balancing act even with experts • At Yale this was an IT initiative based on program needs that led to an entertainment service offering. Regardless, couldn’t have been successful without cooperation and collaboration from the: • Deans • General Counsel’s Office • Students • IT Staff

12. Other Institutions Using Cdigix • Wake Forest • Rochester Institute of Tech • Ohio University • Purdue University • Marietta College • Tulane • University of Denver (DU) • University of North Carolina - Wilmington • … more in progress

13. Happy to Help! • We’ve tried to feed our “story” back into the Academy through EDUCAUSE for the benefit of all • We think it is important that we collectively explore the landscape thoroughly, early on, rather than assume there is one right answer. • Besides this EDUCAUSE Live session have a joint session with Russ in Denver (come if you can, and bring coffee first thing Friday AM) • I’m personally happy to chat with any school interested in our experiences. All I ask is that you email first (charles.powell@yale.edu) to coordinate any lengthy exchanges