Design and implementation of a SMIL-based TeleLearning system.

Abstract

One of the most obvious and important facts for TeleLearning is that it depends on telecommunication and information processing technologies to exist as a means for education. Since the learning and teaching take place at a distance, there must be some medium of communication to bridge the distance. The explosive Internet provides such a channel to convey the information nationally and internationally. Multimedia capabilities in instruction significantly enhance and expand the learning opportunities and quality for the students. Integrated video, audio, image, and text create a rich new learning environment awash with possibility and a clear potential to increase student involvement in the learning process. For many years, various multimedia document models have been proposed and constructed by many researchers. In 1998, SMIL came out as a web-based international standard for synchronized multimedia document, recommended by W3C. We found it a very suitable model to fit in our Internet-based TeleLearning system. In this thesis, SMIL is employed as a format to structurally store an author-scheduled synchronized multimedia presentation for an information-rich course section. An algorithm to detect the temporal inconsistency within a SMIL document was proposed. A SMIL validation tool was developed, and the design and implementation of a SMIL player was discussed.