A new collaborative active learning tool for signal processing education

This paper introduces a distributed object based collaboration system called Collaboard, which can be effectively used to conduct signal processing classes in an interactive fashion. Collaboard allows a group of users in a heterogeneous network environment to share multimedia objects, such as text, geometric entities, equations, images, audio/video objects, and OLE/sup TM/ objects. Collaboard supports multiple user groups and allows a user to actively participate in multiple learning groups. Matlab/sup TM/ has been integrated into this Collaboard as the computational workhorse. The Matlab programs or tasks initiated by any participant are replicated over the network to every participant. Our Collaboard architecture is a distributed object-based tool supporting object video and object audio. The current version of the system includes a RealAudio/sup TM/ server to support streaming audio capability. We believe that the comprehensive and user-friendly architecture of this Collaboard will be a very powerful working tool for DSP/communication systems classes in active learning environment.