Authoring On The Fly: A New Way of Integrating Telepresentation and Courseware Production

C. Bacher, R. Müller, T. Ottmann, M. Will
Computer Science Institute
University of Freiburg

Appeared in: Proceedings of ICCE '97, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia, Dec. 1997

Abstract

We report about a series of experiments carried out at the University of Freiburg which demonstrate that apparantly different activities like teaching in class, telepresentation, and the production of high quality courseware can be merged into a single task. More than 20 lectures on Algorithms and Data Structures have been held using a computer whiteboard, transmitted to remote hosts over the internet, and converted into multimedia documents for offline use. We describe the developement and use of the tools required in this context, discuss the problems still to be solved, and comment on our experiences gained in experiments carried out during the last three years. We argue that Authoring on the Fly is a feasible solution to overcome the cost and labor barrier of the traditional method of courseware production.