Design and Implementation of a Teleteaching Environment.pdf

79 Design and Implementation of a Teleteaching Environment Constantin Arapis and Dimitri Konstantas University of Geneva - CUI 24 rue General Dufour 1211 Geneve 4 SWITZERLAND email: {Constantin.Arapis, Dimitri.Konstantas}@ cui.unige.ch Abstract The ever increasing need for education combined with the recent advances in communication technologies, have encouraged the introduction of numerous remote learning systems and services. In this paper we describe a distance learning system we have developed at the University of Geneva. We also describe the experience we have gained by using the system for conducting telelectures during a period of three academic years. 1. Introduction The ever increasing need for education combined with the recent advances in communication technologies, have encouraged the introduction of numerous remote learning systems and services [WCT] [LSP]. Educational institutions that once provided education via correspondence are now offering network based distribution of courses and seminars, ranging from off-line non-interactive courses to real-time interactive attendance at a class [Ara98]. At CUI (Centre Universitaire Informatique) at the University of Geneva we have started an incremental development of a telelearning environment. The environment is used for a series of real-time interactive telelectures between CUI and GMD (the National German Research Institute for Information Technology) at Bonn (750 Km away from Geneva). Telelectures started at the academic year 96/97 and continue up today on a regular weekly basis. The main difference of our system from other systems lies on two points. The first is the integration of ISDN-based services and Internet-based services in one consistent environment. The second is the “two-site educational scenario” supported by our system. These features can be found independently in different teleteaching environments [Tele] [Pus94] [Leve] but not as an integrated set. The two-site educational scenario is the