Development of Web-based Collaborative Environment For Distant Learning

1. Development of Web-based Collaborative Environment For Distant Learning Supervised by Prof. Michael Lyu Presented by Ma Ka Po

2. 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

3. Communication Environment • Face-to-face meeting • Listening to other • Sharing opinions • Sharing paper works • Brainstorming

4. 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

5. MWPS

6. MWPS (cont’) Construction Editing Management HTML slides Web-based presentation Streaming audio and video Synchronous Asynchronous Delivery of lessons

7. Outlook of MWPS

8. Outlook of MWPS (cont’)

9. Outlook of MWPS (cont’)

10. Inadequate Feedback Text, audio, video Lecture students Text Teaching side Learning side • Insensitivity to lack of interest, understanding • Unable to alter the pace and contents • Unable to view other’s response • Inefficient to give feedback

11. 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

12. 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).

13. Layout of Synchronous mode of MWPS

14. Proposed Architecture of Collaborative Conferencing

15. 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;

16. 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.

17. 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.

18. 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