A Virtual Classroom and More for Global Education

Abstract

Using the present-day multimedia tools it is feasible to create a virtual classroom over the Internet as a possible alternative to conventional education. In the conventional system a student enrolls for a certain number of courses, attends lectures, asks questions, listens to his fellow students asking questions, submits assignments and appears at examinations to earn credits. We have developed a system over Microsoft Windows platform keeping an eye on portability to Unix/Linux in future. It provides a truly interactive live session between the teacher and students. The interaction is through text, viewgraphs, graphics, free-hand drawing/writing, voice, audio and video. A database server with SQL-database manager provides web-based administrative chores like registration, browsing of lecture materials and downloading of pre-recorded lectures etc. Lectures are given from a teacher’s console and received on students’ consoles and mimic the classroom scenario in terms of interactions between the teacher and taught. Besides the conventional applications as mentioned above, the system could also be effectively used for interaction between experts and engineers located at different sites world over on subjects including on economic practices in a particular country.