Overview |
Distance
education over the Internet has become increasingly important during
the last few years. The number of universities in Germany that use teleteaching
to export and import lectures is growing rapidly, since this is an effective
way to improve both the number and the quality of lectures.
While the technical and social conditions
for teleteaching are quite good in Germany, some major problems still need
to be investigated:
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Teleteaching sessions generate media streams
(video, audio, and whiteboard data) with a high bandwidth and that depend
in most cases on multicast technology. This precludes the participation
of students in teleteaching sessions via standard modem lines or ISDN connections.
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Features and handling of the software tools
used for teleteaching are not satisfactory, especially for non-expert users.
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The copyright protection of the multimedia
courseware used in teleteaching presentations is insufficient.
The ANETTE project was initiated by
the Universities of Mannheim, Freiburg and Aachen together with NEC Europe
under the auspices of the
DFN-Verein to
solve these problems. ANETTE consists of three subprojects:
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Students will be connected from home or dormitory
via ADSL technology to the Internet to overcome the bandwidth limitations.
A dial-in gateway will be used to enable participation in teleteaching
sessions.
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A new-generation software tool for teleteaching
- the multimedia lecture board (mlb) - will be developed based on the digital
lecture board and the AOFwb.
-
Mechanisms to ensure copyright protection
of teleteaching courseware will be developed (e.g., watermarking, encryption,
authentification).
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