Abstract Web-based instruction benefits from the inclusion of audio and video content within the mix of instructional materials delivered to the learner. Often, however, the production and delivery of such content is described in terms of elaborate production facilities, armies of content and technical experts, and specialized high-tech delivery systems. To the instructor with ideas for content, streaming audio and video methods are viewed as too troublesome, too expensive, and too technologically intensive to consider pursuing. If there happens to be any actual instructional content, it gets delivered as lengthy pages of text running from border to border in the browser window with an occasional picture to break up the monotony.
Progressive instructors look for ways to enliven the content of instructional pages.
They search for ways to enhance the presentation with techniques that, as best possible, bring the classroom experience onto the Web page. They try to provide interaction between the instructor and the student, provide materials that require active involvement of the student, invoke the student's visual and auditory senses, and personalize the instruction with their own force of personality. This search often leads to streaming audio and video techniques, not only to deliver materials for listening and viewing, but through which the student can better experience personalized, animated instruction. However, producing and delivering audio and video materials is viewed as beyond the capabilities of the average instructor. The notion becomes that preparing this sort of content is much too expensive, too specialized, and too technologically elaborate for the instructor to get involved.