Design of a Web-based synchronized multimedia lecture system for distance education

Currently, the WWW has created an open environment for convenient delivery of HTML pages and low bandwidth video clips. Since HTML pages can present static text and image in much higher resolution to that presented by a low bit rate video clip, we believe that the optimal mode for a WWW based distance lecture is to use: (1) streaming video clips for the audio/video lecturing, and (2) dynamically loaded HTML pages to present the lecture note navigation process. To this end, we have designed a "Live/On-Demand Synchronized AV/HTML Distance Lecture System" to synchronize the presentation of the streaming video lecture, the HTML based lecture notes, and the HTML Navigation Events. We propose a "Web-based Synchronized Multimedia Lecture (WSML) "framework to automate the recording of the media presentation events based on the SMIL specification. The WSML framework consists of three major modules: (1) WSML Recorder for recording the temporal information of the AV lecture; (2) WSML Event Server for receiving, multicasting and depositing WSML events; (3) WSML Browser for presentation of the synchronized AV lecture and HTML based lecture notes navigation. To evaluate the performance of the propose framework, in this stage, we have applied the RealSystem to implement a prototype Synchronized AV/HTML Distance Lecture System using Java/Javascript. The prototype system demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed framework.