Harrisburg University recently unveiled a Web site that not only showcases its new, 16-story, $73-million Academic Center in a three-dimensional fly-through, but also enables visitors virtually to ask questions about the school and get video responses from students and faculty.
The technology, called Synthetic Interviews, was developed at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center. When a visitor to the site asks a question, the software searches all possible answers in its database for a best match, and then a pre-recorded answer automatically plays.
The school is the only institution of higher education in the country using the technology.
Charles Palmer, Executive Director of the Center for Advanced Entertainment & Learning Technologies at HU, says the idea was spun out of research and development at CMU, where he used to work. Palmer, along with a team comprised of developers from both CMU and HU, worked with Commonwealth Media Services in Harrisburg to film students and faculty members and integrate those clips into the software.
“We put together a list of questions we thought would be interesting and separated these into categories,” Palmer says. “Then we went around campus and grabbed the people we thought could answer those questions. We wanted to really get their true feelings and their gut reactions, and I think that shows. These aren’t actors, these are real people, and you get that feeling in the interviews.”
The current version of the site will be updated periodically with new interviews and an ever-expanding database of questions and answers.
Although the Synthetic Interviews are currently tailored to prospective students seeking to learn more about the school, Palmer says that beginning in January his team will begin interviewing faculty members about areas of their research to create more in-depth learning modules.
“We’re planning every other month to reserve studio time,” Palmer says. “It’s a living site; it will never be done. As things change at the university we can instantly update the site and make it available to the public.”
Source: Charles Palmer, Executive Director of the Center for Advanced Entertainment & Learning Technologies at HU
Writer: John Davidson
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