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Hs113 { a System for Computer Supported Cooperative Teaching and Conferencing Hs113 { a System for Computer Supported Cooperative Teaching and Conferencing A
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Stoltefu, Bernd Schlosser, Stefan Pietrek, Georg |
| Copyright Year | 1997 |
| Abstract | A system for distributed conferencing and teaching is presented that allows to transmit presentations from a lecture room to external participants in a computer network. The transmission is bi-directional, that is, external participants can pose questions to the speaker and enter into a dialogue with him. The speaker can use the traditional media, like blackboard and overhead transparencies, but also electronic media like documents loaded into a whiteboard and HTML-documents presented with a Web browser. The lecture room is equipped with remotely controllable facilities like cameras and video recorders. The software HS113 described in this contribution allows to control the devices as well as the transmission of video, audio and whiteboard streams from any location in the network. This exibility is achieved by combining the possibilities of the programming language Java and the MBone video conferencing tools. Besides the technical aspects, ideas for useful applications of the environment, in particular in traditional university education, are outlined. Finally, possible extensions concerning applications and improved user-friendliness are proposed. Zusammenfassung Es wird ein System f ur verteiltes Konferieren und Lehren vorgestellt, mit dem Pr asentationen per Computer-Netzwerk aus einem H orsaal zu externen Teilnehmern ubertragen werden. Die Ubertragung ist bidirektional, d.h. externe Teilnehmer konnen dem Dozenten Fragen stellen und mit ihm in Dialog treten. Der Dozent kann traditionelle Medien, wie Tafel und Folien, benutzen, aber auch elektronische Medien, die in ein Whiteboard geladen oder mit einem Web-Browser angezeigt werden konnen. Der Konferenzsaal ist mit fernsteuerbaren Geraten, wie Kameras und Videorekordern, versehen. Die in diesem Bericht beschriebene Software erlaubt die Kontrolle dieser Gerate und die Ubertragung von Videound Audio-Datenstromen von jedem beliebigen Ort des Rechnernetzes. Diese Flexibilit at wurde durch die Kombination der M oglichkeiten der Programmiersprache Java mit denen der MBone-Videokonferenz-Tools erreicht. Neben den technischen Aspekten werden Anwendungsideen, insbesondere im Bereich der universit aren Ausbildung, aufgezeigt. Schlie lich werden Erweiterungsm oglichkeiten in Bezug auf Anwendungen und erhohte Benutzerfreundlichkeit vorgeschlagen. 1 Computer Supported Cooperative Teaching and Conferencing The HS113-system presented in the following was developed as a basis for the application of computer-based multimedial telecommunication in the elds of teaching and conferencing. As traditional lectures and talks are closely related to each other with respect to the media and techniques of presentation, multimedial telecommunication facilities can also be used in quite similar manner in both elds. There are several advantages arising from the use of multi-medial telecommunication in teaching and conferencing. Scienti c conferences as practiced today have several disadvantages: time consuming and expensive traveling, the preparation of di erent, but overlapping documents like transparencies and printed contributions to the proceedings, and limited possibilities to demonstrate experiments on-line. On the other hand, the classical conference o ers the possibility of spontaneous and personal contacts to other researchers, and a creative atmosphere which should not be given up. A solution may be locally distributed conferences. Each conference site might have a lecture room equipped with the facilities that are necessary for interactive communication between the sites. An extreme case is that the local conference consists of only one participant whose conference site is his o ce, thus, however, giving up the stimulating atmosphere of conference. A local conference can also happen at a place where the experiment is available which is subject of a presentation. Participants have the possibility to attend the distributed conference at a place that is most convenient for them. The scenario just outlined, translated to teaching, means distributed classes. Distributed classes are particular interesting for advanced studies. They may bring together a critical mass of students from di erent universities interested in a special subject which otherwise could not be o ered. Education in humanities and social sciences live from presentations jointly prepared by students and professors, paired with extensive discussions of the pros and cons of assertions. To our experience, this is particularly interesting if students of di erent countries or even continents can be brought together in such a virtual class. In engineering and science, distributed tutorial classes may be helpful to get experienced 1 with special techniques and experiments possibly not available at each place. For example in engineering, remote insight into installations in industrial plants can be given. The quality of advanced teaching can also be improved by inviting specialists or famous scientists to a class which can be implemented easier by interactive telecommunication than by a journey. A key issue in all cases is interaction between the di erent locations. These examples show that multimedial telecommunication can improve the standard of education in classical universities. Besides that, distance teaching with one teacher supplying students located at di erent places, of course, is a eld of application. However, as noticed for scienti c conferences before, the personal contact between students, and between students and teachers is of equal importance. One implication of this observation is that the number of students attending a distributed course has to still allow personal feedback. Otherwise the same negative consequences can be expected as with classical lectures attended by several hundreds of students. The introduction of multimedial telecommunication in education needs accompanying didactical and educational research still to be done. The focus of this contribution lies on the technical facilities required to implement these possibilities of teaching and conferencing. As a reference installation for other locations, audio, video, computing and networking equipment that is useful for that purpose was installed in the lecture room HS 113 of the University of Dortmund. Based on standard software tools, in particular tools available with and written in the programming language Java [AG96], Web servers and browsers, and the MBone [Er94] tools for video conferencing, the necessary operating software HS113 was developed. The complex combination of analogue and digital data streams and the remote control of several devices, paired with the necessity of a user-friendly interface that does not burden the speaker, makes this a non-trivial task. A particular feature of the HS113 software is that the event can be controlled from everywhere in the network. For instance, the audience in a remote lecture room can interactively determine the movement of the camera and the transmitted video channel, thus having some sort of \interactive TV". The possibilities supported by the HS113 software and the underlying hardware are outlined in the following sections 2 and 3. A further section, 4, is devoted to the user 2 interfaces to the system which takes in a major part of HS113. Using existing tools limited the e orts necessary for the implementation of the system, cf. section 6. Furthermore, to some extent this guarantees the portability to other environments. Portability and adaptability to di erent con gurations at other sites was a key issue that was considered in the design of the HS113 software. The design which follows the philosophy of object-orientation is described in section 5. Finally, experiences with the current implementation and ideas of how to extend the current system are compiled in section 7. The HS113 activity is one of an increasing number of projects in which video and audio transmission is used for teaching purposes. It is practically impossible to give a complete survey. Lists of projects concerned with multimedial teaching can be found under [YA]. In Germany, we know of activities at universities and institutes at Darmstadt [Fh;DA], Dresden [DD], Erlangen [ER], Freiburg [FR], and Mannheim [MA]. Projects closest to ours with respect to the application are those of [SD95] and the one at the University of Erlangen [ER]. In contrast to our emphasis on the software requirements of the complex system of audio, video, networking, and user interface components, the rst one focuses on the use of ATM, while the second one seems to use available video conferencing tools without further modi cations. The main goal of this contribution is to give an example of a technical solution for the operating software requirements of distributed conferencing and teaching with controllable equipment. The development in this eld is extremely fast, and technical details are rarely published. In our opinion, it is important to bring together the isolated solutions, in order to nd a settled approach. This must be seen together with the problem of nding applications which are not only interesting from a technical point of view, but are fruitful for the eld teaching and conferencing, like those sketched at the beginning which look promising for us. 2 The System HS113 The system HS113 allows to transmit presentations from a lecture room to external participants. The range of external participants reaches from 3 single attendees up to an audience which comes together in a lecture room. In contrast to TV-like broadcasting, transmission is bi-directional, that is, external participants can pose questions to the speaker and enter into a dialogue with him. Transmission is based on MBone-multicasting. The speaker can use the traditional media, like the blackboard and overhead transparencies. This means that no special preparation is required. The contents of the blackboard and the transparencies are captured by video camer |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
