|
More than half of the higher education institutions in the United
States offer distance learning services, and the enrollment doubles
every three years. Unfortunately, current distance learning systems fail
to match the effectiveness of conventional on-campus learning. Remote
students feel isolated because of low level of interactivity during
remotely delivered lectures and because of lack of access to other
proven on-campus learning activities such as office hours and study
groups.
We have begun developing a distance learning system that promises to deliver
high-quality education remotely. The primary design concerns are sustained
interactivity and visual realism to ensure effectiveness, and use of commodity
hardware to ensure deployment scalability. Every classroom on every campus can
and should provide distance learning seats; any course should be accessible to
remote students. It is our goal to make distance learning an integral but
unobtrusive part of proven conventional on-campus learning, as opposed to a
parallel activity that drains considerable resources and is often ineffectual.
The system enables the interactive participation of remote students to on-campus
lectures. Remote students--each one potentially located at a different site--are
integrated in a virtual extension of the local classroom (Figure 1). The local
classroom extension is projected onto the back wall using a rear-facing
projector. A remote student is acquired with a webcam and is modeled with a
real-time video sprite. A high-quality integrated audio feed delivers instructor
and remote student audio to all sites. The system relies exclusively on
commodity hardware components (Figure 2).
Current and future work includes running a pilot course to measure
educational effectiveness, achieving scalability with number of remote
students and with geographic area, and developing support for study
groups and office hours.
Download a video that shows the system in
use:
AVI
MOV | 
