Distance Learning Experiment

Download a PDF or Postscript version of the full SunLabs technical report.

Overview

The arrival of high-bandwidth networking will bring opportunities to support realtime interaction for education across both local and wide area networks. Previous studies have shown that use and effectiveness have been greatly constrained by the available networking speeds and media platforms. While many organizations have focused on live instruction delivery, we have chosen to focus our experiment on collaborative learning within a distributed group of students.

Distributed Tutored Video Instruction (DTVI)

SunLabs' Interactive Collaborative Systems group performed a long-term experiment with a group of over 1000 students from California State Polytechnic University at San Luis Obispo, and California State University at Chico.

The DTVI setup made use of a "Brady Bunch" array of video windows, including one panel for a facilitator and one panel for a video-based lecture. The figure at right shows this array with the group facilitator station and video lecture filling the two lower right panels. All students (though shown in place at right) can see and hear each other, and all students can talk to the facilitator who controls the playing of the video lecture.

The facilitator can move across Kansas to access to a system configuration area that allows him or her to control volumes, student input, and video feeds. The figure at right shows this system configuration area.

• DTVI Experiment Goals and Objectives
• Experiment Structure
• Results Summary
• FULL TECHNICAL REPORT NOW AVAILABLE!

Enhanced DVTI:Some of the 1000 students participated in a trial of "Enhanced DTVI," which allows collaborative note taking and other forms of student cooperation.

(Note, the graphics on this page are clickable to reveal larger resolution screen snaps.)