MULTIMEDIA ENHANCED UBIQUITOUS LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

The ever enhancing information and communication technology has created a significant change in the educational field particularly in higher education in terms of the learning tools and methodologies used. In that, e-learning in its broad sense makes use of network and computing resources for bringing general education to the doorsteps of those who are unable to physically attend to regular schools because of their personal, family or work related responsibilities. E-learning opens new dimensions for education ranging from smart classrooms that transfers technology and know-how cultivated through years of rigorous research and teaching endeavor at one location to many other locations, to a simple file sharing system that facilitate access to lecture notes. Blended learning is a hybrid modality that explores maximum potential benefits of distant education and face-to-face classroom education. The amount of multimedia support facilitated a Learning Management System (LMS) majorly decides its capability to make distance education as effective as classroom education and make the blended leaning experience more effective.
The WEBCT/Blackboard system, heavily used commercial LMS, has integrated virtual classroom/collaboration functionality in its latest (Windows Vista compatible) version. Moodle, a heavily used open source LMS, has also integrated a multimedia plug-in, named DimDim, to facilitate primitive video conferencing capability. While the technology is moving toward a multimedia rich learning management system, its practical deployments is still far away, due to many unsolved technical and pedagogical problems. Many improvements have to be done in integrating various multimedia metaphors to the system. Extending conventional modes of multimedia access to a broad range of devices is essential to create a ubiquitous learning environment. To this end the infrastructural support in Japan has become quite promising with Japan’s trend in (a) already high 3G mobile coverage students to high tech communication devices. With this background in Asia Pacific University in Japan, we have started developing a Multimedia Enhanced Ubiquitous Learning Management System to enhance its education with low cost as well as low burden to teachers.
In this paper we present our three fold contribution in enhancing LMS. First methodology integration by which multimedia can be ingested into the LMS in many ways. A lecture recording in the class, multimedia posted as lecture contents, client side recorded clips as student reports, multimedia blogs, and live conferencing are all ingesting methods. The retrieval may be a file downloading, on demand streaming or live streaming. Secondly, Content Integration by which different form of multimedia interacts with main course. In this case, all forms of multimedia ingested into the system are logged as events in the system for cross reference. Thirdly, access integration which creates a real u-learning environment by enabling a wide array of mobile devices to participate actively in the Learning/teaching process.