Using the Internet and Wireless Technologies to Achieve Interactive Delivery of Lectures

Project Title

Using the Internet and Wireless Technologies to Achieve Interactive Delivery of Lectures

Project Leader

Prof Gary Chan

School / Dept

SENG / COMP

Project Duration

Sep 2002 - Dec 2004

Project Description

Traditionally, students interact with instructors in classroom lectures. Yet it is not convenient or cost-effective for those students who are working, have access/mobility difficulties, live in a remote area, or experience social isolation such as during the SARS outbreak. With the popularity of broadband Internet connection and wireless medium (Wi-Fi and 3G), a platform for interactive online lectures was developed. This project, "Cyberclassroom," offered a similar experience to traditional teaching but with students connected through the Internet. They may raise questions to their instructors anywhere, anytime using their PCs or laptops over the Internet or wireless medium. Real-time videos, audios and whiteboards were also streamed to the end users. The system was scalable to hundreds of students and made use of current off-the-shelf computing products and state-of-the-art networking techniques. It was cost-effective, breaking geographical limitation in attending lectures. Initial feedback from students using the system was positive and encouraging.

Project Outcome

• A system termed “Cyberclassroom” for large-scale delivery for multimedia stream was developed, so that students distributed in the Internet may attend lecture interactively with the instructor and their peers.
• A paper entitled “ Island Multicast” was presented at the IEEE (i.e. Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineering) ICC (International Communication Conference)  on 20-24 Jun 03. Island Multicast is a tool for global delivery of multimedia streams to a large number (~1000) of users in a scalable manner.
• A paper entitled “ Cyberclassroom: a large-scale interactive distance-learning platform” was presented at the Teaching and Learning Symposium organized by CELT in May 04.
• Island Multicast was adopted to support the Cyberclassroom project.

Status

Completed

Project Documents
(Only accessible by HKUST users)

• Project Plan
• Progress Report: First | Second | Third |
• Final Report

Adaptation

Full Project