Development of Web-based Collaborative Environment For

Distant Learning

Supervised by Prof. Michael Lyu

Presented by Ma Ka Po

Outline

1. Communication Environment

2. Web-based Education

3. MWPS

4. Proposed Enhancement

5. Design Requirement

6. Proposed Architecture

7. Problem Encountered

8. Future Plan

9. Conclusions

Communication Environment

Face-to-face meeting Listening to other Sharing opinions Sharing paper works Brainstorming

Web-based Education

World Wide Web (WWW)

Bringing a new way to learn and teach

Allowing geographical distribution of teachers and students

Efficient delivering materials (both text and multimedia)

Control own learning pace

Advantages of WBE:

Easy update course materials

Available on demand

Flexible presentation format

MWPS

MWPS (cont’)

Construction

Editing

Management

Web-based presentation

HTML slides

Streaming audio and video

Synchronous Asynchronous

Delivery of lessons

Outlook of MWPS

Outlook of MWPS (cont’)

Outlook of MWPS (cont’)

Inadequate Feedback

Lecture students

Text, audio, video

Text

•Insensitivity to lack of interest, understanding

•Unable to alter the pace and contents

Teaching side

•Unable to view other’s response

•Inefficient to give feedback

Learning side

Proposed Enhancement

Adding multimedia conferencing feature

- allows multimedia information (text, graphics, animation, audio and video) generated, transmitted, and presented in real-time on-line environment on both lecturer and students sides

Develop collaborative environment in order to achieve efficient communication

Design Requirements

Create customized collaborative environment (user interface) with the appropriate access; Incorporate distributed multimedia functions; Exploit the state-of-the-art audio, video and network technologies; Enable open collaborative applications (sharing documents, images); Set of separate modules (audio, video, whiteboard, etc).

Layout of Synchronous mode of MWPS

Proposed Architecture of Collaborative Conferencing

RealEncoder

MWPSClientWeb

Browser

Lect

urer

/Pre

sent

er

RealPlayer

Multi-mediaContent

RealServer

MWPSServer

WebServerS

erve

r C

ompu

ter

MWPS/ClassContent

RealEncoder

MWPSClientWeb

Browser

Aud

ienc

e 1

RealPlayer

RealEncoder

MWPSClientWeb

Browser

Aud

ienc

e N

RealPlayer

.

.

.

Control flow

Data/InternetConnection

Problems encountered

Support for continuous media Dramatically increasing transferred materials over the limit of the bandwidth;

Real-time synchronization Difficult to maintain synchronous transmission manner;

Multiparty communications Lack of facilities to support for joining and leaving of groups at run-time;

Problems encountered (cont’)

Hardware supports Individual computing power may not support co-existing

real-encoder and real-player in the same time; Much more equipment are needed in students’ side;

Training for students Students with little experiences operating computer may

find difficulties to use the system, as a result, losing the studying interest.

Future Plan

Acceptable discarding frame policy should be introduced to minimize the demands on bandwidths;

Corresponding facilities need to be added;

Performance of synchronous should be addressed;

Related training programs for student should be well specified.

Conclusions

• Effective collaboration between the instructor/student and student/student are crucial

• Inefficient interaction exists in campus wide educational environment

• Factor determines the fate of future web-based education

• Adding the conferencing feature try to improve the communication flow

Lecture seems held on a virtual classroom over the network