E-Learning Media

Web-based learning is rapidly replacing the traditional means of remotely distributing and delivering university courses and classroom lectures. This online learning, often referred to as e-learning is also becoming an accepted means of employee training and education among corporations because of its compelling cost saving advantages, especially with respect to time and travel. Additionally, e-learning opens up exciting possibilities of self-driven education, with the flexibility to set one's own pace of learning, motivating increased participation and self-directed learning when needed. Over the past few years, researchers in media and education have focused on building systems for classroom content acquisition, distribution, and delivery. While content acquisition and distribution can be automated using e-Seminar like systems, challenges remain in the area of easy-to-use content delivery and access. Automated content indexing and annotation for media searching and browsing become key tasks in flexible content delivery and consumption. Particularly in the context of e-learning, there are a slew of materials, such as slides, white-board contents, etc associated with the audio and video streams of the courses taught.

Our E-Learning Media system addresses issues related to customizable lecture delivery, by developing the following capabilities: Slide indexed course browser, Slide-timeline mediated audio/video access, Exposition of Table of Contents for smart navigation, Time synchronized speaker transcript with slide browsing.

See Publications for our recent paper on this topic at the ACM MM 2001.