Adaptive Synchronization of Semantically Compressed Instructional Videos for Collaborative Distance Learning

Motivation And Background

Correspondence courses have been available for over a century, for example, the University of Wyoming began offering extension courses in 1892 (Miller, Ditzler, & Lamb, 2003) correspondence courses have traditionally been designed for individual students with a self-motivated learning style, studying primarily from text materials.

A National Science Foundation report (NSF, 2002) discusses how technology, from radio to television; to audio and video cassettes; and to audio and video conferencing has affected distance education. The report states that the recent use of Internet technologies, especially the Web, has “allowed both synchronous and asynchronous communication among students and between faculty and students” (p. 1) and has “stimulated renewed interest in distance education.” (p. 4) It also mentions that “stimulating interaction among students” (p. 4) can help reduce dropout rates, which it says may be higher in distance education than in traditional courses. Finally, it cites some studies that “suggest the Web is superior to earlier distance education technologies because it allows teachers to build collaborative and team-oriented communities.”