mlb

 
Introduction

Teleteaching sessions (and other forms of computer-based video conferencing) typically combine three different media types: audio, video, and whiteboard. A whiteboard offers a shared workspace where slides can be presented to the conference group and where documents can be edited by all particpants. Besides audio, the whiteboard is the most important instrument for sharing information among distributed participants.
In the last few years, two whiteboards have been developed at the Universities of Freiburg and Mannheim: the Authoring on the Fly whiteboard (AOFwb) and the digital lecture board (dlb). Despite the fact that each whiteboard was designed under different circumstances, they have in common many features and ideas. But at the same time, neither has all functions desirable for professional Teleteaching. Hence it was decided to develop the multimedia lecture board (mlb) as a successor to both tools, both merging existing and adding new features.

 
Project mlb

The mlb will have to support students and professors in different situations. We distinguish the following phases of a teleteaching course: 

• Preparation of teaching/learning materials (asynchronous) using different media types (images, postscript slides, short animations, etc.). Documents need to be stored.
• Telepresentation/telecollaboration (synchronous) using prepared and live-generated documents. This is the most demanding phase since the participants need to be supported by collaborative services to coordinate the distributed session. In contrast to traditional courses, the number of communication channels in teleteaching sessions is restricted and social protcols such as "raising a hand", "pointing to a certain part of a document", "granting the right to modify a document", or sidetalks do not work very well. Instead, explicit collaborative services need to substitute/reproduce these protocols.
• Recording of teleteaching sessions (including audio and video) for later access.
• Postprocessing of documents modified during sessions (e.g., correcting annotations).
• Offline Usage of recorded sessions, whereas different distribution models (CD-ROM, Download) are conceivable.

 
The mlb will offer an integrated platform for computer-based video conferencing, especially teleteaching, i.e., existing audio (e.g., vat) and video (e.g., vic) will be integrated into the user interface of the whiteboard. This is necessary to simplify the handling of the tools for non-expert users and to enhance inter-tool cooperation.
One major condition for a wide distribution of the mlb is the support of different operating systems (Windows and Unix). Particularly students participating in the IHL project are likely to be using Windows PC's.

Summarizing, the mlb will offer the following features:

• Support of different operating systems (UNIX and MS Windows).
• Integration of audio and video.
• Animations.
• New media types (HTML, ...).
• Collaborative services such as session and floor control.
• Integration of RTP/I, a novel application level protocol for distributed interactive media.
• ...


Development of the mlb is a joint project between the Universities of Mannheim and Freiburg.

Download: The latest version of the mlb can be downloaded under http://www.informatik.uni-mannheim.de/informatik/pi4/projects/mlb.
 
 

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