Friday, June 18, 1999

Coming to a Computer Near You: Astronomy Courses With Attitude -- and Actors By JEFFREY R. YOUNG Falls Church, Va. A little-known company here offers a kind of Cliffs Notes for the MTV generation -- and, possibly, a glimpse into higher education's future. The company's product: videotaped study aids with up-tempo soundtracks, flashy graphics, and undergraduate-age actors who look like they just danced out of a Gap television advertisement. Students can watch the review tapes on their VCR's. Soon the guides will also be available on DVD and over the Internet. Unlike on-line courses produced by universities, Cerebellum videos are lighthearted and irreverent. Complex concepts are explained with skits, jokes about dating and drinking, and the occasional song. The company, called Cerebellum, says that its videos are intended to supplement, not replace, traditional college courses. The company even puts a disclaimer on every tape, telling students to "attend your classes, read your books, study hard, and listen to your professor." But some professors worry nonetheless that students might be tempted to skip class and watch the movie version instead. Other observers wonder whether the company could one day compete with colleges. The company offers more than 50 titles -- on basic subjects like algebra as well as on more-advanced topics like organic chemistry -- and it could conceivably offer degrees of its own one day, although its leaders say it has no plans to do so. In any case, Cerebellum already has products that many college administrators seem eager to create -- academic teaching materials delivered with the latest technology. Unlike on-line courses produced by universities, Cerebellum videos are lighthearted and irreverent -- the title of the series, for instance, is "The Standard Deviants." In the videos, complex concepts are explained with skits, jokes about dating and drinking, and the occasional song. You won't see anyone with a doctoral degree on screen, but professors are consulted in making every tape, says a co-founder of the company's, Chip Paucek. The professors' names, and the names of their universities, are touted on Cerebellum's packaging. During a tour of the company's offices and studios here, Mr. Paucek goes out of his way to say that although the videos seem breezy, months of research and production go into each one. He points to a shelf of statuettes representing awards the videos have won, and he leafs through stacks of comment cards from satisfied customers. While he talks, he absent-mindedly squeezes a small rubber toy shaped like a human brain -- a promotional item given out by the company. "Everything's focused on the content," he says. "The content is just written in a much more approachable fashion." He says the steady stream of jokes is meant to hold students' attention and make the material seem less intimidating. In the Standard Deviants video on astronomy, for instance, a narrator explains the term "geocentric," and then a woman is shown primping in front of a mirror, telling herself that she is "the coolest person on earth" and that everything revolves around her. No, the narrator says, that's the definition of "egocentric." Geocentric means the earth is the center of everything. Corny, yes, but more interesting than some university lectures. More-complicated concepts, such as mathematical equations, are explained using animated graphics. Mr. Paucek says the animations and skits are what distinguish the Standard Deviants tapes from printed study guides. "It's amazing what a little graphic can do when you're learning," he says. Of course, the video format has its disadvantages. It's difficult to present a long and complicated formula in a two-hour video, whereas the same formula could be set out easily on paper. Cerebellum hasn't done any national advertising, other than placing displays in hundreds of college bookstores. The company has relied on word of mouth, and the occasional recommendation from a professor, to make sales. The videotapes sell for $19.95 each. When the company was getting started four years ago, Mr. Paucek and his co-founder, James Rena, thought about putting their material on CD-ROMs instead of videotapes. But the two decided that CD-ROMs couldn't hold the amount of video and audio necessary for their two-hour study guides. And back then, few students had access to CD-ROM drives. "If we had gone CD-ROM, we'd be out of business by now," says Mr. Paucek, noting that many companies that have tried to sell educational computer software have failed. These days, however, computers have gotten faster and cheaper, and new storage formats like DVD have hit the consumer market. Cerebellum hopes to be one of the first companies to offer educational videos using those digital technologies. The company will release its first DVD this month, and it plans to have 14 available by the end of the year. Richard Winkler, Cerebellum's DVD editor, says the company is taking advantage of the interactive features of DVD's. Unlike a videocassette, a DVD allows a viewer to jump to any part of the disk just by pushing a button. Besides transferring the Standard Deviants videos onto DVD's, Mr. Winkler is adding menus to help students skip to topics they're interested in. "You can jump in anywhere," he says, using a remote control to select a vocabulary section on the DVD version of the company's introductory-Spanish video. "It would probably take you 10 minutes to find this on your VCR," he says. He's also adding multiple-choice quizzes, with 25 to 35 questions per DVD. Students can watch an actor ask a review question, then choose an answer using the remote control. The disk then skips to a video clip of the actor explaining whether the answer was right or wrong. The company is also working to deliver its videotapes over the Internet. By entering a credit-card number on a World-Wide Web site, students will soon be able to watch the videos instantly from their personal computers. For a smaller fee, the Web site will allow students to watch only the specific sections of a videos that they need to review. Mr. Paucek says that the company hasn't worked out the pricing, but that some of the videos will be available over the Internet by August 1. Would students rather review astronomy with a hip-looking actor than with a professor? William C. Parke, a professor of physics at George Washington University who served as a consultant for the astronomy video, isn't worried about competing with videos. "By that argument, students could just read the textbook instead of coming to class, too, but they would miss the emphasis and reinforcement that only direct human interaction affords," he says. He sees the videos as ways to "get the students excited about the subject," rather than as replacements for books and lectures. Besides, Mr. Parke points out, a student who watched only the video wouldn't do very well in his "Introduction to Astronomy" course. "It doesn't have even one-tenth of the material that we cover," he says. Background story from The Chronicle: A Stable of 'Superstar Teachers' Performs Before the Camera (11/6/98)