Impact of Interactive Multimedia in E-Learning Technologies

Multimedia-based technologies have significant impact on our daily life learning activities as they have shifted the education from teacher centered to learner centered. E-learning provides opportunities to people to take course online and provide a virtual classroom environment on the web through teacher learner interactions, course material distribution based on interactive multimedia. Interactive multimedia offers learners different forms of media to match their learning style, provides personalization of adaptive content delivery which enhanced learners learning effectiveness. In this chapter, we have discussed how information quality can be improved by multimedia based authoring tools and approaches, also identified the negative and positive effects of using interactive multimedia for learners in E-learning. Finally, focus was given on current E-learning multimedia technologies, their research challenges and future trends on social networking based technologies.

Impact of Interactive Multimedia in E-Learning Technologies

Multimedia-based technologies have significant impact on our daily life learning activities as they have shifted the education from teacher centered to learner centered. E-learning provides opportunities to people to take course online and provide a virtual classroom environment on the web through teacher learner interactions, course material distribution based on interactive multimedia. Interactive multimedia offers learners different forms of media to match their learning style, provides personalization of adaptive content delivery which enhanced learners learning effectiveness. In this chapter, we have discussed how information quality can be improved by multimedia based authoring tools and approaches, also identified the negative and positive effects of using interactive multimedia for learners in E-learning. Finally, focus was given on current E-learning multimedia technologies, their research challenges and future trends on social networking based technologies.

Adaptive Content Delivery in E-Learning Systems using Mobile Agents

The e-Learning refers to the use of networking technologies to create, foster, deliver and facilitate learning anytime, anywhere. This chapter discusses our research on personalization of e-Learning content based on the learner’s profile. After justifying the feasibility of using mobile agents in distributed computing systems for information retrieval, processing and mining, the authors deal with the relevance of mobile agents in e-Learning domain. The chapter discusses the proposed Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) as an approach to context-aware adaptive content delivery. Different parameters like technological, cultural and educational background of a learner are taken as the basis for forming the case-base that determines the type of content to be delivered. Along with the CBR, a diagnostic assessment to gauge an insight into the student’s current skills is done to determine the type of content to deliver. The implementation observations of such implementation vis-à-vis traditional e-Learning are also documented.

Project Smart Remote Classroom Providing Novel Real-Time Interactive Distance Learning Technologies

Real-time interactive virtual classrooms play an important role in distance learning. However currently available systems are insufficient in supporting large-scale user access, and they cannot efficiently support accessing with heterogeneous devices and networks. Furthermore, these systems are usually desktop-based, until the result that the teacher’s experience is completely different from teaching in a real physical classroom. This paper discusses the Smart Remote Classroom project that deals with these difficulties using the following novel technologies: 1) A hybrid transport layer multicast protocol called TORM and an adaptive content delivery scheme called AMTM, which work together to enable large-scale users to access a virtual classroom with different devices and networks synchronously. 2) A dedicated software called SameView, which takes use of the proposed TORM and AMTM technology, and provides a rich set of functions for teachers and students to efficiently carry out the real-time interactive tele-education. 3) The Classroom augmented by Smart Space technology called Smart Classroom where the user interfaces of the SameView are incorporated in the classroom space. Thus the teacher can instruct the remote students just like teaching face to face in a conventional classroom. All these technologies have been successfully integrated and demonstrated in the prototype system at Tsinghua University.