Tele Education Essay, Research Paper
1.0 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of Tele-education Tele-education has a long
history beginning with systems like that for teaching children in Australian
Outback, the British Open University and other such organizations. These built
on the idea of correspondence courses where course materials are sent
periodically by post and augmented the experience with broadcasts either on
radio or on TV. The problem of student isolation was addressed partially through
techniques such as telephone access or two-way radio links with teachers. At the
end of 1980s, the vest majority of distance education throughout the worlds was
still primarily print-based. Technologies used for distance education are
evolving from primarily ?one-way? technologies and applications such as
computer aided learning, computer based training and computer aided instruction,
to more ?two-way? technologies and applications such as computer mediated
communications and computer conferencing systems for education. The significance
of ?two-way? technologies is that they allow foe interaction between
participant and tutors, and perhaps even more significantly amongst participant
themselves. This development has allowed and in some senses force researches to
look more closely at the impact of educational environment, on the students
learning experience. In the future, it is expected that the
telecommunications-based technologies to become the primary means of delivery of
distance teaching. The reasons for this are as follows: · a much wider
range of technologies are becoming more accessible to potential distance
education participants · the costs of technological delivery are dropping
dramatically · the technology is becoming easier to use for both tutors
and learners · the technology is becoming more powerful pedagogically
· education centers will find it increasingly difficult to resist the
political and social pressures of the technological imperatives. 1.2 The
Emergence of Tele-education Radical changes in the computing infrastructure,
spurred by multimedia computing and communication, will do more than extend the
educational system, that is revolutionize it. Technological advances will make
classrooms mush more accessible and effective. Today, classroom education
dominates instruction from elementary school to graduate school. This method has
remained popular for a very long time and will probably persist as the most
common mode of education. However, classroom education has its problems, that is
the effectiveness decline with increase in the number of students per class.
Other pressures affect the instructors, many of whom are not experts in the
material they must teach, are not good ?performers? in class, or simply are
not interested in teaching. The biggest limitation of the classroom instruction
is that a class meets at a particular time in a particular place. This
essentially requires all students and the instructors to collect in one spot for
their specified period. But with the emerging technology, these problems can be
overcome. 1.3 Reasons for studying Tele-education The current Tele-education
systems that have been applied in some countries are generally of multipoint
transmission technique. It is found that, this kind of transmission technique
having several problems or defects. Mostly, problems raised during the
application of the system. One of the significant problems raised is that, for
the multipoint transmission, the signals or information transmitted by the
sender do not completely received by the receiver. This problem is might be due
to error that occurs during the transmission of the signals or information.
Another problem is lag of transmission. For this case, the signals or
information transmitted do not arrive at all the receiver at the same time, for
example, the question raised by the lecturer might not received by the students
at the same time and this is not a good environment for Tele-education system.
Some receiver receives the signals earlier than the others and some later or
even not receives at all. Therefore, it is important to study the Tele-education
technology from time to time to overcome these problems so that the
Tele-education system could provide a more effective way of learning
environment. In order to have a lecture from, for example, a very famous
professor from other country would require him to come at our place. But the
amount of money spent for paying him to give lecture would be very expensive and
this also would cause troublesome for him. However, this problem can be solved
with Tele-education system in which the professor does not need to go anywhere
else to give his lecture. This would save a lot of expenses and time. Another
reason is that, in normal classes the learning process would not be very
effective if the number of students in a class is very big. This is because the
lecturer alone can not coordinate such a large class. With Tele-education
system, one lecturer could deliver his lecture to as many students as possible
effectively in a way that a large number of students from different sites having
the same lecture at once. 1.4 Purpose of Research The purpose of this research
is to study the current Tele-education system that has been applied in some
countries. This study covers the background of Tele-education; that is its
definition, the publications of Tele-education; that is any papers that discuss
about Tele-education as a whole, the performance of applied Tele-education, and
also the technology of Tele-education; that is its network architecture. But the
main purpose of this study is to understand the Tele-education system that have
been applied in another country and try to implement it in our country. 1.5
Acronyms ATM Asynchronous Transfer Mode CCITT Committee Consultatif
International Telegraphique et Telephonique CPE Customer Premises Equipment IP
Internet Protocol ISDN Integrated Services Digital Network ISO International
Standard Organization JAMES Joint ATM Experiment on European Services LAN Local
Area Network MAC Medium Access Control Mbone Multicast Backbone PC Personal
Computer POP Point-of-Presence PVC Permanent Virtual Channel QoS Quality of
Service RAT Robust Audio Tool SLIP Serial Line Internet Protocol TCP-IP
Transmission Control Protocol – Internet Protocol TES Tele-Educational Service
UI User Interface VIC Video Conferencing Tool VP Virtual Path VPN Virtual
Private Network VSD Virtual Student Desktop WAN Wide Area Network WWW World Wide
Web XC Cross Connect 2.0 METHOD OF INVESTIGATION Since Tele-education is a very
new technology that is popularly discussed today, it is quite difficult for me
to find any books that discuss about Tele-education from the library. Therefore,
the easiest and the fastest way to gather information relating this project is
via the Internet. I have surfed and found many interesting sites that discuss
about Tele-education. Besides surfing, I also have contacted several people who
are involved in this area, Tele-education, by e-mail . But unluckily, this does
not really help because most of them did not reply. Besides using the Internet,
I also get the information for this project from the IEEE Database at the
library of Universiti Telekom. 3.0 BACKGROUND STUDY 3.1 Definition of
Tele-education What is Tele-education? Before discussing about what
Tele-education means, lets look at what distance learning is. This is because
Tele-education and distance learning are very related to each other. Distance
learning is the acquisition of skills and knowledge through electronic
communications that allow student and instructor to be separate in either in
time or space. The to distance learning is ?asynchronous learning? which can
be defined loosely as learning at different time. It is a highly flexible method
of training because the sender and receiver do not need to be synchronized in
space or time. But Tele-education is more than that of distance learning. In
Tele-education, not only asynchronous but synchronous learning is also made
possible. In other words, Tele-education is the evolution of distance learning.
As stated before, asynchronous learning environment is not real-time
environment. It is a self-study-based application and is accessed via the
Internet to a server. The requirement to the student is only an ordinary PC with
standard software and Internet access. This application is applicable for a
large amount of users who can access the course independent of each other. The
combination of the lecture-part, group-work-part, and self-study-part is another
type of Tele-education learning environment, which is synchronous learning. It
is a real-time environment. In this environment, students and lecturers can
interact with each other simultaneously. Tele-education use the technology of
video teleconferencing that allows two or more parties at different geographical
area to interact with each other or to have learning process together. But
people usually get confused whether video teleconferencing can be considered as
Tele-education as well. Tele-education is actually different with video
teleconferencing in a way that Tele-education usually involve a large number of
people as compared to video teleconferencing, that is, it is in video
teleconferencing many people use a single monitor to see other people at other
area but in Tele-education, students have their own monitor that can be used not
only to see their lecturer and colleagues but also to send and receive
educational materials. 3.2 Publications of Tele-education There are many papers
discussing about Tele-education. Most of these papers cover only the general or
overall scope of Tele-education. The area of discussion on Tele-education can be
summarized as the following: · Tele-education service · Content of
Tele-education · Network architecture · performance of
Tele-education · operation and management of Tele-education For
Tele-education service, it describes about what multimedia tele-service and
hyper media service is, and how it can be integrated into Tele-education
service. It also describes about what Tele-education service facilitate. Content
of Tele-education describes about the style or mode of Tele-education system,
that is, what kind of education style used, and how the lecture notes or any
materials delivered to all the students. For network architecture, it describes
about the protocol used for the Tele-education system and its network
infrastructure. Performance of Tele-education covers the performance of service
of Tele-education and also the network performance. The description of these
performances is from the customer point of view. For the operation and
management of Tele-education, it describes about what should be taken into
consideration in order to provide a well managed Tele-education service. 3.3
Examples of Systems From the study of materials gathered, there are generally
three examples of Tele-education system that have been applied in the Europe and
Canada. Those examples are: · Tele-education NB · Delta ’s Virtual
College · ACTS Project AC052 (RACE Project Report) The purpose of looking
into these examples is to try to understand what kind of Tele-education system
is implemented, how Tele-education can be implemented, to know what are the
requirements to implement it, and what considerations should be taken into
consideration for implementing it. 3.3.1 Tele-education NB Tele-education NB is
implemented at the University of New Brunswick, Canada. The present physical
network consists of three independent networks that operate on telephone lines;
· Voice · SMART 2000 computer teleconferencing · Computer
Mediated Communications using NBNet The SMART 2000 bridge for computer software
sharing and audiographic teleconferencing is owned and operated by the
Tele-education NB. This is accessed by simple dial connections using ordinary
telephone lines. This allows for the computer monitor at each site to show
images created by users at the other sites. The software can be used like an
elaborate electronic blackboard, overhead projector, or slide projector. In
addition, it is being used for software sharing at multiple locations. Data
communications are transmitted over NBNet using a SLIP server which resides in a
user friendly simple menu front-end created by Tel-education NB to permit easy
access to NBNet and to facilities available. Students and teachers can access
NBNet for uploading and downloading assignments and other course materials. A
CD-ROM server is being set up at the central site and at the University of New
Brunswick library for permitting access to different databases. Tele-education
NB also supports an on-line learning center with a file server located at Mount
Allison University. Information of relevance distance education and the network
in particular can be accessed there. In Tele-education NB, a special listserv is
created for internal communications among different sites. As an integral part
of the province’s electronic information highway, Tele-education NB is
supporting the development of an open, distributed network, taking advantage of
media available. The most widely used delivery modes are audio teleconferencing
with SMART 2000, as well as videoconferencing. However, it is not limiting the
network to any one technology, or suite of technologies. It is actively
promoting experimentation and cooperation in the reception and delivery of
courses using other software and media. Tele-education NB placed routers in the
Community College Campus in each region, and other sites in regions that do not
have a college. Initially it operates using 56K connections and will move T1.
SMART 2000 runs not only on regular telephone lines but also on LANs and WANs
using Novell, TCP-IP and other telecommunication protocols. Tele-education NB
are now experimenting with synchronous transmissions using the TCP-IP protocol
on NBNet. The Picturetel videoconferencing units existing in province all are
CCITT compatible. Tele-education NB has provided the guidelines for selecting
appropriate technology for its network as follows: · The network shall
experiment with different technologies and endeavor not to rely on any one
technology or any supplier. · Existing equipment and distance education
sites in the province shall be integrated into the network wherever possible.
· The network shall establish computer teleconferencing and computer
conferencing links among the sites, including access to electronic information
highway and the Internet. · Satellite delivery and reception capabilities
and upgrading of sites to PC-based videoconferencing will be investigated for
implementation in future. · Other optional equipment may be placed in
sites at the request of users and institutions such as MACs and CD-ROMs.
· The network should be compatible as much as possible with other
provinces and regions. 3.3.2 DELTA’s Virtual College Delta’s Virtual College is
implemented in Denmark (Europe). It offers the opportunity for students to
participate in desktop Tele-education from their homes or offices. This concept
means that individual students participate in Tele-educational courses using a
desktop computer online connected to a course provider. The user interface is a
common Web browser, that is, Netscape Web-browser, extended with loosely
integrated audio and video tools. The educational environment applies the
metaphor of a virtual college. The idea is that students access DELTA’s virtual
college server when participating in a course. The user interface looks like the
plan of a college. From the college hallway, the student can enter different
rooms with different functions. Those rooms are: · classrooms where
on-line lectures and presentation take place, · group rooms where on-line
cooperative work takes place, · studies where off-line study such as
self-study material, exercises, slides from previous lectures, supplementary
material and links to other sites on the Web take place, · teacher
offices where it is furnished with course administration tools, · tea
room where it is used for informal chat and social contact with fellow students
during break. The following figure, the "floor plan", illustrates
those rooms: Figure 1 : The floor plan The goal of this virtual college is to
integrate different modes of teaching and learning. This includes synchronous
mode like on-line lectures and group exercises as well as asynchronous mode like