Supporting presentation with mobile PC in distance lecture

We developed a prototype system for supporting presentation with a mobile PC in distance education, which have been designed to keep eye contact between students and a lecturer and to facilitate finger pointing by a lecturer in videoconference. Despite convenient functions supporting videoconferencing, it is often difficult to keep the awareness and attention information during remote lectures. Our solution for addressing such difficulties is to present materials using a mobile PC held by a lecturer, instead of presentation slides usually displayed on a different screen away from the lecturer's face. We believe that this mobile-PC based presentation style makes it easy for the remote students to see the lecturer's face and lecture materials simultaneously, facilitating eye contact and finger pointing. In addition to the support, the function of displaying an outline during a lecture with a tree-structure map is implemented into the system, so that the remote students can understand the place of each material in the whole lecture.