New Trends in Distance Learning Utilising Next Generation Multimedia Networks

  • Authors:
  • Theodore Zahariadis;Stamatios Voliotis

  • Affiliations:
  • Ellemedia/Bell Laboratories,223 Sygrou, Athens, Greece E-mail: zahariad@ellemedia.com;Technical Educational Institute of Chalkida, Department of Automation Psahna, Greece E-mail: svoliotis@teihal.gr

  • Venue:
  • Education and Information Technologies
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

Bandwidth capabilities of next generation networks have turned interactive multimedia services to a cost effective reality, targeting not only large companies, but SMEs and individual users as well. An application with direct social impact is tele-teaching and in the broader sense distance learning. A large numbers of colleges, universities, and other higher education institutions already offer online courses to their local and remote students, via new methods of education. In this paper, combining the WWW, the H.323/MPEG-4 protocol family and the CORBA model, we specify an open system and network architecture towards the Virtual Classroom realisation. Over this architecture an educational process is described using formal Object Modelling Technique (OMT) rules, while educational services are provided as methods of distributed objects. In this way, a framework is proposed in order to allow educational institutes to publish content in an abstract object-oriented manner, so as to become widely available via the well-known WWW interface.