VIDEO EMAIL - A METHOD OF SPEEDING-UP ASSIGNMENT FEEDBACK FOR VISUAL-ARTS SUBJECTS IN DISTANCE EDUCATION

The type of asynchronous communication offered by electronic mail has been shown to be particularly effective for providing feedback on assi gnments in distance education. However, the use of electronic mail has generally been restricted to the exchange of textual information. For practical assignments which include a large visual component, a metho d of providing feedback which enables the tutor to point to features o f the student's work is needed. This paper reports the results of a re cent investigation into the feasibility of providing visual feedback t o students in practical art subjects by sending compressed digital vid eo clips as attachments to email messages. It concludes that transmiss ion of video by email is now technically feasible, although bandwidth constraints of dial-up links and the time taken for compression put a tight limit on the amount of video that it is practicable to transmit. Nevertheless, developments in technology are expected to improve this situation quickly. Many of the issues that are examined are relevant to other areas of multimedia delivery.