Workstation Cellular Framework for Computer Aided Design Interactive Online Courses

Online courses have potential to reach broader audience when compared to traditional learning methods, as they can be made instantly available to groups of students dispersed over wide range of locations and time zones. Some learning topics are easily adopted to this online environment, while others may be challenging to implement as online courses due to their specific requirements and associated cost. If mastering certain topic requires hands-on experience then online course must be made interactive to match the experience of a traditional instructor-led class. Otherwise, online course will be perceived as unsatisfactory and lacking positive impact. Computer Aided Design (CAD) training requires both high performance Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) and hands-on experience with specific CAD software. Both these requirements are difficult to meet on a remote student computer without additional cost. In this paper, grouping CAD workstations into cells is proposed in order to perform required graphics processing using existing hardware and software resources available in an average CAD laboratory. Proposed cell framework uses video capture and GPU hardware encoding to stream the content to the remote students while capturing their interactive feedback for the near real-time hands-on experience. The framework requires single capture card per cell and utilizes 20% of the resources for the cell overhead processing. Remaining 80% of workstations are fully available to the online students and instructors.