A Cloud-based Automated Authoring System to support e-Learning in Higher Education Under Low-Speed Internet

The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, Japan.

National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo Japan.

A Cloud-based Automated Authoring System

to support e-Learning in Higher Education

Under Low-Speed Internet

Osamnia Mohamed

Outlines :

Introduction.

Research Goal

Some Existing Systems

Objective

Flash based e-Meeting system / WebELS Learning

System design and methods

System Diagram and Operation

Resource and Metadata files

Conclusion

Osamnia Mohamed

• Rapid eLearning is an ongoing trend which enables:

• Flexibility and cost-effective in creating learning materials.

• Save time and reduce the cost

• WebELS system is web based E-Learning system

• support higher education in engineering and science

technology.

• Cross-platform systems

• Opensource application

• Weakness and problem

• High speed required

• Fully automated.

• Information access to the learning contents created.

Introduction

Research Goals

To support flexibility and globalization of PhD education in

science and technology especially in developed countries like

in Africa where there technology is very limited.

Offer an easy-to-use Cloud-based authoring system for

institution and universities to facilitate the creation of learning

contents under low-speed internet environments.

Osamnia Mohamed

Existing systems :

• Cisco Webex ---- Commericial platform

• Adobe connect ---- Commercial to use all the features of the

platform

• OpenMeeting --- record the screen activities what required high

speed internet and lack of information privacy.

• BigBlueButton ---- Open source on-line conferencing system

that developed the record/playback function in the latest release

BBB 0.8 using audio and slides synchronization.

• T-Cube (A Multimedia Authoring System for eLearning) :

Doesn’t support end users. Osamnia Mohamed

Why Higher Education ?

E-Learning now offer new more flexible learning methods for the

new Higher Education Environment in the digital age.

According to some research that characterized Higher Education, it

is based on :

Self-learning

Conference presentations

Group meetings

Teacher-student discussion

Research presentation

Osamnia Mohamed

Objective :

Automated authoring system should be able and not limited to:

• Create Learning contents from meeting by real time recording.

• Record the video meeting from the on-line presentation.

• Synchronize the video from web camera with the slides

presentation.

• Create Learning contents for off-line reviewing automatically.

• Export the learning contents to the Learning Module or other

Learning platforms (SCORM) Osamnia Mohamed

Flash based e-Meeting system

-WebELS Meeting is designed for online meeting conference

system via Internet-based technologies.

-support the higher education for online learning activities, include

several functionality such as content-authoring, online presentation,

video conference and so on.

-It is Conference system don`t required high-speed Internet and a

specific operating system.

- To generate learning contents automatically based on e-Meeting

presentations, the automated authoring system was proposed.

Osamnia Mohamed

WebELS Learning system

-General e-Learning platform to support flexibility and globalization

of higher education.

-WebELS learning offers various tools for teachers that help to

deliver and archive learning materials on the web.

Mains features :

-Web-based usage (any browsers and no need for special programs).

-Anytime , Anywhere, Anybody

-Support slides synchronization with video, audio and cursor

movement.

-Simple and friendly User Interface to break-down the need for IT

skills.

-Cross-platform solution.

Osamnia Mohamed

MAP the two modules of the WebELS platform:

Learning (Create

Learning contents

off-line)

Meeting (Real-Time

Presentation)

WebELS Platform

-Record Presenter Video

-Synchronize the video

with the slides presentation

and annotation actions, etc

Learning

Content Export

Imp

ort

Automated Authoring

Proposed System

Osamnia Mohamed

System Design and Methods:

• Detect presenter video and record it.

• Save the presenter video as .flv in each virtual room.

• While recording, the system will divide the streaming data into a

small parts that synchronize to the current presentation slides by

slides control (Next, Previous).

• Record the cursor movement (x, y) as well as the annotation data

including all setting data (Zoom, Color, Cursor, etc.)

• Automatic synchronization (Background process).

Osamnia Mohamed

System Diagram :

Capture /Archive / Process / Export/ Import/ Edit * / Save

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Automated Authoring System Diagram

System Components :

A- Recording function : based on the current flash-based meeting

system UI, the client send a control signals such as start, pause, stop

recording to the server for background process.

B- Playback function: a viewer user interface that can interact with

the server for streaming the data resources such as : video,

presentation slides, annotation, etc.

Osamnia Mohamed

Support Low-Speed Internet

Slide-based

Audio-video quality

Slides-based

Low quality Document image,

<100Kbps

Medium quality Document

image, 100Kbps<X<1Mbps

High quality Vector Graphics,

>=1Mbps

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For audio/video streaming recording, it can be adjusted

according to the presenter bandwidth environment

automatically :

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Flow of Operation :

Video Meeting

started

Click “Start record”

While Meeting is ON, background processing :

Save Resources data files:

1- Presenter video

2-Slides presentation (img, video)

Create Control Metadata files :

1-content_description.xml per recording

2- meta-description.xml per recording

3-annotation_metadata.xml per slide

4-cursor_xy_data.dat per event change

Click “Stop record”

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Generate 4 important files :

- Metadata-descrption.xml : contain the content description such

us title, passowrd, abstract, etc..

- content_description.xm : hold slides data information such as:

slide number, title, type, etc.

- annotation_data.xml : contains information of the whiteboard

such as cursor, pen size, text annotation, etc.

- Cursor_xy_data.dat : Contains the x and y position of the mouse

during the on-line presentation.

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Resource data synchronization:

For each slide a resource data attached to it such as video, image,

annotation and slide control.

Osamnia Mohamed

e-Meeting interface used for start recording

(1): audio/video stream data, (2): record button, and (3): the

slide index information. Osamnia Mohamed

Learning mode interface for playback

(1): Video panel for displaying the video clips recorded of the current slide,

(2): Slide panel for displaying the current slide, (3): Content Information

panel for the slides details (number, title, and description), (4): Control panel

for managing the online learning content.

Osamnia Mohamed

Evaluation of the system :

To compare the proposed system with common requirements and

features of otherr systems, a catalogue of important criteria for

automated systems can be used.

These criteria does not claim to be complete ad suitable for all

kinds of evaluation, but reveals the most important aspects

(Ziewer 2006)

Table 1 present how the proposed system respond to these

criteria in comparing with another common system (Journal of

E-Learning 2007 - Stolzenberg)

Osamnia Mohamed

Criterion Sub-criteria AAS (WebELS)

C01 Verbal Narration YES

C02 Live Video YES

C03 Presentation Content Format of presentation Documents Doc, Pdf, Video, PPT, etc

C04 Annotations a) Type of Annotations Text, Freehand, rect, etc

b) Dynamic capture and reply of annotations YES (Planned)

c) Student Note-taking YES

C05 Metadata

YES

C06 Post-processing a) Video Editing YES

b) Content Editing YES

C)Creation of Distributed Media YES

C07 Navigation a) Structured Electronic Lectures YES

b) Random Access YES

c)Visible Scrolling YES

C08 Information Retrieval a) Searchable Content NO

b) Range of search-ability NO

C09 Format of produced Electronic Lectures

a) Lossless Reproduction YES

b) Scalability YES

c) Stream-ability YES

d) Format SWF (Flash format)

e) File size and bandwidth Several options

C10 Platform independency YES (Cross-platform)

C11 Synchronous Electronic Lectures

YES

StolZenberg (2007)

YES

YES

Common formats

Text, Freehand, rect, etc

YES

NO

indirect

YES

NO

YES

YES

YES

YES

Planned

Planned

NO

NO

YES

QuickTime

Several options

NO (MAC OS only)

planned

This system targets lecturers and students in the higher education, for the

flexibility and globalization of post-graduate studies. The system generates learning

contents automatically based on a real-time presentation, synchronizing the lecturer video

stream and the slides presentation by means of video clip timing. It composes of two main

functions, recording function and playback function. When the recording function is

trigged during the on-line presentation, at the back-end the automated system start

processing to record the presentation and create the learning content. The playback

function is used to review the content stored at the server side by learners, who could not

attend the real-time presentation or for further understanding of the lecture. Both recording

and playback function were designed for non-IT users by simple to use interface and to be

stable under low-speed internet. Furthermore, the automated authoring system was

implemented on the cloud-computing environment to ensure reliability and scalability of

the system.

Conclusion:

Osamnia Mohamed

Thank you for your kind attention

[email protected]