16 Infrastructure and Technologies for On-Line Education

The fundamental goal of this project is implementation of Education electronic support (eSupport) for full-time students, firstly at the Department of Telecommunication Engineering (Czech Technical University in Prague, Faculty of Electrical Engineering), with possible sharing with other departments within the CTU and at partner technical universities.

In 2003, our team resumed the activities and followed up with the results from 2002 when we had proposed and implemented a conception for support of modern education forms within a full-time university study; the pilot examples served as an inspiration for further steps and applications.

During the first half of 2003, with respect to the aims of the project, we had been finishing implementation of the environment (poly-functional WWW portal) for support of education, adding and optimising its functions. We have been continually and systematically supplementing educational materials of various types for substantial part of courses taught at our department. At present time, the system appears to be a comprehensive source of quality materials for education support.

Figure 16.1: Arrangement of the Recording and Streaming Workplace

The workplace for acquisition of video streams and recordings was supplemented with several necessary parts (namely, a mixer for editing analog tributary signals in real time, on-head and lapel wireless microphone system). This opened way for recording integral blocks of lectures (in fact, our ten recorded lectures almost completely cover one semester of Transmission Systems course) as well as for experimental live broadcast of the said lectures over the Internet - using the equipment (file server and streaming server) of the CESNET Association in both cases. Concurrently we had been testing the quality of video and audio outputs using various transmission speeds; we concluded that the three used alternatives should satisfy most of our users.

On the departmental level, intensive educational activities among teachers were performed in order to make them regularly use the system and contribute to its content, primarily with text documents and possibly, in the future, with recordings of their own lectures.

During the last semester week we carried out an extensive survey among the users of the system (both students and teachers); the results clearly showed that positive responses and constructive attitudes prevailed. We have made functional and logistic changes in the system implementation according to the users' remarks.

From the beginning of the winter semester 2003/2004 we have been regularly recording and broadcasting on-line a wider selection of lectures; to be specific, this concerns the courses Transmission Systems II and Program Control of Switching Systems as well as Digital Filter Design in cooperation with the Faculty of Transportation Sciences, and also regular lectures and seminars of the Research and Development Center (RDC). Thus, the project moved from a departmental level to a university level. We also abandoned the originally used RealVideo format and accepted the Windows Media format as a new standard, which the students welcomed. Our departmental WWW portal that provides access to the published materials for education support is now running steadily, being continuously optimised and upgraded.

Figure 16.2: Mobile Subsystem Implementation

The expansion of our activities and transition from experiments to the regular broadcast of lectures described above was possible after we had completed and optimised the mobile workplace. The quality of recordings substantially improved thanks to a DVD recorder use; photography and workplace servicing took an advantage of a new video camera and tripod with motor-driven head; a notebook computer acting as an output streaming device improved the overall system mobility. We have also built a mobile table that integrates all necessary devices into one functional unit, thus eliminating the necessity of time-consuming repeated plugging and unplugging the devices for each lecture. The next experimental step should be a self-serviced operation of the entire system.

At the end of October we organized an experimental videoconferencing lecture (dedicated particularly to streaming technologies) in which our colleagues (teachers and students) from the partner department at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava took part remotely. Thus, the project entered an international dimension. The connection used three ISDN BRI lines (i.e. six B-channels). The lecture was also recorded on a DVD. Furthermore, we discussed videoconferencing issues, including IP-based connection and quality of on-line streamed video, within a videoconferencing session with a partner department at the Technical University of Ostrava.

Currently we prepare routine collaboration in education using shared lectures in selected courses together with technical universities in Bratislava and Ostrava.

Another successful experiment of this type was an evaluation of a UMTS Internet on-line streamed lecture quality and of its recording quality. This lecture was broadcast from the Alcatel SEL headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. Feedback from participating experts was very positive in all cases. We also performed experiments with dial-up connection using standard modems for those students who do not have broadband Internet access. We confirmed that the transmission of sound from streamed lectures was good enough - keeping in mind that students usually have access to static electronic presentations (e.g., PDF files) published on the WWW portal, this is a satisfactory result.

Emphasis was put on publishing and dissemination of our experience. Partial results of the project were introduced at the following conferences: COFAX-Telekomunikácie 2003 (Bratislava, Slovakia), eLearning ve vysokoškolském vzdělávání 2003 (Zlín, Czech Rep.), EAEEIE (Gdańsk, Poland), ICEE (Valencia, Spain), RTT (Bratislava and Častá-Píla, Slovakia), ICETA (Košice, Slovakia) and VIEWDET (Vienna, Austria). At all these forums the project was presented and new contacts and impulses for our work were found.

Sharing the experience at least within the Czech Technical University is regarded as the most important; other priorities include an appointment of a common strategy and distinct proclamation of support for modern eLearning technologies (especially eSupport), expanding the capabilities of the Centre for Educational Support, as well as determining the roles of the Computing Centre and CESNET Association in this process. Coordinating the project activities with other universities would be advisable; this could result in higher effectiveness by sharing the experience and preparing eSupport materials and in common strategy in applying for European projects with respect to the relevant EU priorities.

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