M.Ed. (Media Studies) / Man's need for information is continually increasing and this need, in turn, presupposes continuing education and training (Freysen 1985:1). Further study, however, demands a high degree of motivation and self-discipline, and for that reason it is generally adults that register for such study, to update or broaden their knowledge. Since most students are employed and cannot be traditional students at a residential university, they turn to distance education as a result of the possibilities it offers. As a result of the separation between the student and the lecturer particular use is made of the printed word, as well as broadcasting and telecommunication media. Traditional dialogue takes place in the form of correspondence through the post, and it is also dependent on the above communication media. Among the problems that have been identified is the fact that most study packages have not been designed and compiled with the media in mind, and if various media are selected, this is done in a haphazard way. This study attempts to propose a procedure by which the lecturer can approach the design of multimedia study packages for distance education. For the lecturer, as well as the student, audiovisual media offer better control over learning, and greater interaction with the learning content. The student can revise, study and integrate the learning content at his leisure. In practice this means that audiovisual media should be more effectively used when planning instruction and learning (Bates, 1984:6). The distance education situation is approached as a didactic situation and the mportance of various components of the study package as an instructional is shown. The importance of media selection in the compilation of the study package is indicated, and certain aspects of instructional design are discussed. In this study an attempt has been made to show that instructional design is on the one hand a definite need, but on the other a definite possibility in distance education. Instructional design takes place in a systematic way by means of different procedures. During the design process a multimedia approach is followed in order to put together a multimedia study package which will put the student in a better position to learn.

M.Cur. / Please refer to full text to view abstract

Abstract Nowadays, content is increasingly in digital form and distributed in the Internet. The ease of making perfect copies of the digital content has created a need to develop a means to protect it. Digital rights management (DRM) relates to systems designed to protect the intellectual property rights of the digital content. The DRM systems try to enable a secure distribution of digital content to the users and to prevent the unauthorized copying, usage, and distribution of the content. This is usually done in practice using encryption and digital watermarking techniques. This thesis concentrates on the problem of protecting and distributing multimedia content securely in mobile environment. The research objectives are: (1) to design an overall DRM architecture which allows an easy content distribution to the user in mobile environment; (2) to develop protection methods that can be used in mobile devices with limited computational capabilities to prevent unauthorized usage of the audio content; (3) to create methods for managing and enforcing the user’s rights and restrictions to the content usage; (4) to study a method for providing the users with an easy access to new digital content and services. The research is carried out by first developing an overall DRM platform to mobile environment. The experimental prototype of the platform is implemented on server side to PC environment and the client runs on a mobile phone. The platform is used to test the functionality and complexity of the content protection methods developed which are based on digital watermarking and encryption techniques. The main results of the thesis are: (1) a DRM platform for mobile devices that supports peer-to-peer networking and license negotiation; (2) audio protection methods utilizing digital watermarking and encryption techniques which support content superdistribution and content preview; (3) methods for counting offline how many times content has been played on the user’s terminal using watermarking and hash chains; (4) a method for adding metadata, such as a web link, into audio content, so that it survives digital to analog to digital transformation and recording with a mobile phone.

Tidigare och aktuell forskning visar på att onomatopoesi förekommer iskönlitteratur men studierna saknar värdefull information inom ämnet. Merutförliga undersökningar går att spåra till ämnet inom språkvetenskap.Syftet med denna studie är att belysa hur onomatopoesi gestaltas iskönlitterära produktioner och om personer delar en gemensam tolkning avljudhärmande ord som kan förekomma i dessa produktioner. Studiengenomfördes med ett kvalitativt forskningsperspektiv samt med enfenomenologisk utgångspunkt. Ett frågeformulär utformades där 36individer deltog. Ett antal ljud presenterades för deltagarna som de sedanskulle texta. De ljud som visade på gemensamma tolkningar presenterades itexter. Dessa ljud var BONK och SPLOOSH. Slutligen skapades engestaltning som knyter samman den tidigare och den aktuella forskningenmed svaren från frågeformuläret. Detta resulterade i en interaktiv bok sommed hjälp av digitala verktyg skapar en originell produkt. / Previous and recent studies shows that onomatopoeia is presented in fictionstories but the studies lack valid information within the subject. Moredetailed research can be found within language studies. The purpose of thisstudy is to enlighten onomatopoeia, how it is presented in fictionproductions and if people share a mutual vision of sounds imitating wordsthat might be used in these productions. The study was conducted with aqualitative method and with a phenomenological perspective. 36 individualsparticipated in a questionnaire that was conducted. A number of sounds waspresented to the participants who then had to type the sound in text. BONKand SPLOOSH showed a mutual vision and the result was presented astables. A product was created to unite the previous and recent studies withthe result from the questionnaire. This resulted in an interactive book thatwith help of digital tool create an ordiginal product.

This thesis introduces a method for contact-free optical audio reconstruction of phonograph records using laser triangulation. The reconstruction is done using a 3D-profile camera and by scanning the surface of record in a single circumference. The depth-map created by the camera is then used to decode the audio information stored in the record. To evaluate the quality of the decoded audio information, it is tested against digital copies of the same record in order to analyze the correlation between it and the extracted sound. The result of this thesis presents a decoded and high correlated audio which is recognizable to an original digital copy. The method is well suited for fast real-time or faster than real-time decoding implementations.

The effects of using limited precision floating point for intermediate storage in an embedded MP3 decoder are investigated in this thesis. The advantages of using limited precision is that the values need shorter word lengths and thus a smaller memory for storage. The official reference decoder was modified so that the effects of different word lengths and algorithms could be examined. Finally, a software and hardware prototype was implemented that uses 16-bit wide memory for intermediate storage. The prototype is classified as a limited accuracy MP3 decoder. Only layer III is supported. The decoder could easily be extended to a full precision MP3 decoder if a corresponding increase in memory usage was accepted.

On propose dans cette thèse de compresser et de synthétiser un signal audio par inversion de ses motifs d'excitation auditive. On traite l'approche du codage dans le domaine perceptuel et on propose un codeur qui exploite la redondance présente dans ces motifs. On commence par proposer un nouveau filtre auditif à faible complexité qui peut non seulement modéliser les réponses mécaniques de la membrane basilaire, synthétiser les réponses impulsionnelles du nerf auditif mais aussi expliquer les expériences du masquage fréquentiel. Ensuite on détaille l'exploitation de ce même banc de filtres auditifs pour la discipline de la compression des signaux audio. Des modèles de masquage adaptés à ce banc de filtres sont appliqués aux motifs d'excitation auditives pour obtenir des représentations éparses. Des expériences montrent que ce codeur permet de réduire considérablement la redondance dans le domaine perceptuel tout en maintenant une bonne qualité subjective de synthèse.

Magister Bibliothecologiae - MBibl / The study investigated the significance of collaboration in the management and preservation of audio-visual archives at the National Archives of Zimbabwe (NAZ) in light of the challenges presented by this heritage resource. An exploration of literature has revealed that managing audio-visuals is not an easy part and most cultural heritage institutions in developing counties have been struggling. The underlying premise is that collaboration ensures efficiency and effectiveness in the management and preservation of audio-visual archives

The purpose of this research was to investigate whether interactivity yields a learning effect when used appropriately in e-Learning Systems, and whether this effect enhances learning. The importance of interactivity for success in learning has always been paramount; however, little scientific evidence can be found to support this importance (Sims, 2003; Leiner & Quiring, 2008). Thus, this research aims to provide evidence of the impact of interactivity on e-Learning Systems considering three main agents: the learner, the teacher and the system (educational triangle). A key element often found to be related to learning and the three previously-mentioned agents is the concept of feedback. The use of interactivity as part of a feedback mechanism for enhancing learning is well documented in this research. Three empirical studies were designed to investigate interactivity within the educational triangle. These three studies, developed to support the research hypotheses, were conducted based on the framework of positivism and action research paradigms. The first study, entitled “Interactive Pedagogical Feedback”, aimed to gather evidence for how highly interactive pedagogically-designed formative feedback enhances students’ memory and understanding. The two student groups to which the interactive conditions were added showed a significant difference in the post test scores. A one-way ANOVA with a Turkey HSD post hoc test for all pair wise comparisons reveals a significant difference between the transfer and no condition scenario. The second study, entitled “Interactive Audio Feedback”, examined whether the speed enhancements of oral feedback improve the conditions for the production of lecture’s feedback and the quality of the feedback delivered to the students. The use of the interactive condition reduces by 40 to 65% the time it usually takes to prepare feedback for final assignments, and an unpaired Student’s t-test shows significant differences in the use of the two conditions. The final study, “Interactive Texting Feedback”, took a pedagogical approach to provide formative feedback to a student audience using mobile text messages. It aimed to determine whether Interactive Texting Feedback enhances the leaning experience within the e-Learning environment. Inferential analysis demonstrated good correlations in the use and benefits obtained by the introduction of the interactive mechanism. The results indicated that interactivity is critical in promoting and enhancing effective learning. Learning theories led by the generative theory of learning (Wittrock, 1974) and the principles of multimedia learning (Mayer, 2001) provide scientific explanation for this findings.

Abstract Broadband communication networks and multimedia data available in a digital format opened many challenges and opportunities for innovation. Versatile and simple-to-use software and decreasing prices of digital devices have made it possible for consumers from all around the world to create and exchange multimedia data. Broadband Internet connections and near error-free transmission of data facilitate people to distribute large multimedia files and make identical digital copies of them. A perfect reproduction in digital domain have promoted the protection of intellectual ownership and the prevention of unauthorized tampering of multimedia data to become an important technological and research issue. Digital watermarking has been proposed as a new, alternative method to enforce intellectual property rights and protect digital media from tampering. Digital watermarking is defined as imperceptible, robust and secure communication of data related to the host signal, which includes embedding into and extraction from the host signal. The main challenge in digital audio watermarking and steganography is that if the perceptual transparency parameter is fixed, the design of a watermark system cannot obtain high robustness and a high watermark data rate at the same time. In this thesis, we address three research problems on audio watermarking: First, what is the highest watermark bit rate obtainable, under the perceptual transparency constraint, and how to approach the limit? Second, how can the detection performance of a watermarking system be improved using algorithms based on communications models for that system? Third, how can overall robustness to attacks to a watermark system be increased using attack characterization at the embedding side? An approach that combined theoretical consideration and experimental validation, including digital signal processing, psychoacoustic modeling and communications theory, is used in developing algorithms for audio watermarking and steganography. The main results of this study are the development of novel audio watermarking algorithms, with the state-of-the-art performance and an acceptable increase in computational complexity. The algorithms' performance is validated in the presence of the standard watermarking attacks. The main technical solutions include algorithms for embedding high data rate watermarks into the host audio signal, using channel models derived from communications theory for watermark transmission and the detection and modeling of attacks using attack characterization procedure. The thesis also includes a thorough review of the state-of-the-art literature in the digital audio watermarking.