Doing Real-time E-teaching: The Peer-to-peer Approach of the Javaslides Prototype

A. Molinari and L. Colazzo (Italy)

Keywords

Web-based educational systems, Authoring tools, real-time online learning

Abstract

This paper presents an approach to computer-assisted teaching within the university context. We will show how the approaches based solely on technologies that merely diffuse educational material (based predominantly on a client-server paradigm) are often inadequate. We present a prototype for on-line teaching that goes beyond the broadcasting approach or the HTML-based website, integrating the educational material in a real-time environment in which the teacher manages the exposition through a “control panel” that allows him/her to choose what to show “on-the-fly”, thus adapting the exposition to the different circumstances and guaranteeing the coherence of the exposition. We will demonstrate the need to integrate these technologies with approaches wherein the instructor and student interact via computer to examine the didactic material together, thereby adopting an architecture that is more in line with a peer-to-peer logic. From our experience, this type of architecture not only makes it easier to engage in distance learning in real time, but it is also more effective and provides more support for the teaching process.

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