A conceptual architecture for interactive educational multimedia

Learning is more than knowledge acquisition; it often involves the active participation of the learner in a variety of knowledge- and skills-based learning and training activities. Interactive multimedia technology can support the variety of interaction channels and languages required to facilitate interactive learning and teaching. A conceptual architecture for interactive educational multimedia can support the development of such multimedia systems. Such an architecture needs to embed multimedia technology into a coherent educational context. A framework based on an integrated interaction model is needed to capture learning and training activities in an online setting from an educational perspective, to describe them in the human-computer context, and to integrate them with mechanisms and principles of multimedia interaction

Online cooperation learning environment : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Computer Science at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

This project aims to create an online cooperation learning environment for students who study the same paper. Firstly, the whole class will be divided into several tutorial peer groups. One tutorial group includes five to seven students. The students can discuss with each other in the same study group, which is assigned by the lecturer. This is achieved via an online cooperation learning environment application (OCLE), which consists of a web based J2EE application and a peer to peer (P2P) java application, cooperative learning tool (CLT). It can reduce web server traffic significantly during online tutorial discussion time

A taxonomy for interactive educational multimedia

Learning is more than knowledge acquisition; it often involves the active participation of the learner in a variety of knowledge- and skills-based learning and training activities. Interactive multimedia technology can support the variety of interaction channels and languages required to facilitate interactive learning and teaching. We will present a taxonomy for interactive educational multimedia that supports the classification, description and development of such systems. Such a taxonomy needs to embed multimedia technology into a coherent educational context. A conceptual framework based on an integrated interaction model is needed to capture learning and training activities in an online setting from an educational perspective, describe them in the human-computer context, and integrate them with mechanisms and principles of multimedia interaction

The future of technology enhanced active learning – a roadmap

The notion of active learning refers to the active involvement of learner in the learning process, capturing ideas of learning-by-doing and the fact that active participation and knowledge construction leads to deeper and more sustained learning. Interactivity, in particular learnercontent interaction, is a central aspect of technology-enhanced active learning. In this roadmap, the pedagogical background is discussed, the essential dimensions of technology-enhanced active learning systems are outlined and the factors that are expected to influence these systems currently and in the future are identified. A central aim is to address this promising field from a best practices perspective, clarifying central issues and formulating an agenda for future developments in the form of a roadmap

Supporting Constructive Learning with a Feedback Planner

A promising approach to constructing more effective computer tutors is implementing tutorial strategies that extend over multiple turns. This means that computer tutors must deal with (1) failure, (2) interruptions, (3) the need to revise their tactics, and (4) basic dialogue phenomena such as acknowledgment. To deal with these issues, we need to combine ITS technology with advances from robotics and computational linguistics. We can use reactive planning techniques from robotics to allow us to modify tutorial plans, adapting them to student input. Computational linguistics will give us guidance in handling communication management as well as building a reusable architecture for tutorial dialogue systems. A modular and reusable architecture is critical given the difficulty in constructing tutorial dialogue systems and the many domains to which we would like to apply them. In this paper, we propose such an architecture and discuss how a reactive planner in the context of this architecture can implement multi-turn tutorial strategies

Commercial-off-the-shelf simulation package interoperability: Issues and futures

Commercial-Off-The-Shelf Simulation Packages (CSPs) are widely used in industry to simulate discrete-event models. Interoperability of CSPs requires the use of distributed simulation techniques. Literature presents us with many examples of achieving CSP interoperability using bespoke solutions. However, for the wider adoption of CSP-based distributed simulation it is essential that, first and foremost, a standard for CSP interoperability be created, and secondly, these standards are adhered to by the CSP vendors. This advanced tutorial is on an emerging standard relating to CSP interoperability. It gives an overview of this standard and presents case studies that implement some of the proposed standards. Furthermore, interoperability is discussed in relation to large and complex models developed using CSPs that require large amount of computing resources. It is hoped that this tutorial will inform the simulation community of the issues associated with CSP interoperability, the importance of these standards and its future

Using the Java Media Framework to build Adaptive Groupware Applications

Realtime audio and video conferencing has not yet been satisfactorily integrated into web-based groupware environments. Conferencing tools are at best only loosely linked to other parts of a shared working environment, and this is in part due to their implications for resource allocation and management. The Java Media Framework offers a promising means of redressing this situation. This paper describes an architecture for integrating the management of video and audio conferences into the resource allocation mechanism of an existing web-based groupware framework. The issue of adaptation is discussed and a means of initialising multimedia session parameters based on predicted QoS is described