1. The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, Japan.
National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo Japan.
A Cloud-based Automated Authoring System
to support e-Learning in Higher Education
Under Low-Speed Internet
Osamnia Mohamed

2. Outlines :
 Introduction.
 Research Goal
 Some Existing Systems
 Objective
 Flash based e-Meeting system / WebELS Learning
 System design and methods
 System Diagram and Operation
 Resource and Metadata files
 Conclusion
Osamnia Mohamed

3. Introduction
• Rapid eLearning is an ongoing trend which enables:
• Flexibility and cost-effective in creating learning materials.
• Save time and reduce the cost
• WebELS system is web based E-Learning system
• support higher education in engineering and science
technology.
• Cross-platform systems
• Opensource application
• Weakness and problem
• High speed required
• Fully automated.
• Information access to the learning contents created.

4. Research Goals
To support flexibility and globalization of PhD education in
science and technology especially in developed countries like
in Africa where there technology is very limited.
Offer an easy-to-use Cloud-based authoring system for
institution and universities to facilitate the creation of learning
contents under low-speed internet environments.
Osamnia Mohamed

5. Existing systems :
• Cisco Webex ---- Commericial platform
• Adobe connect ---- Commercial to use all the features of the
platform
• OpenMeeting --- record the screen activities what required high
speed internet and lack of information privacy.
• BigBlueButton ---- Open source on-line conferencing system
that developed the record/playback function in the latest release
BBB 0.8 using audio and slides synchronization.
• T-Cube (A Multimedia Authoring System for eLearning) :
Doesn’t support end users.
Osamnia Mohamed

6. Why Higher Education ?
E-Learning now offer new more flexible learning methods for the
new Higher Education Environment in the digital age.
According to some research that characterized Higher Education, it
is based on :
Self-learning
Conference presentations
Group meetings
Teacher-student discussion
Research presentation
Osamnia Mohamed

7. Objective :
Automated authoring system should be able and not limited to:
• Create Learning contents from meeting by real time recording.
• Record the video meeting from the on-line presentation.
• Synchronize the video from web camera with the slides
presentation.
• Create Learning contents for off-line reviewing automatically.
• Export the learning contents to the Learning Module or other
Learning platforms (SCORM)
Osamnia Mohamed

8. Flash based e-Meeting system
-WebELS Meeting is designed for online meeting conference
system via Internet-based technologies.
-support the higher education for online learning activities, include
several functionality such as content-authoring, online presentation,
video conference and so on.
-It is Conference system don`t required high-speed Internet and a
specific operating system.
- To generate learning contents automatically based on e-Meeting
presentations, the automated authoring system was proposed.
Osamnia Mohamed

9. WebELS Learning system
-General e-Learning platform to support flexibility and globalization
of higher education.
-WebELS learning offers various tools for teachers that help to
deliver and archive learning materials on the web.
Mains features :
-Web-based usage (any browsers and no need for special programs).
-Anytime , Anywhere, Anybody
-Support slides synchronization with video, audio and cursor
movement.
-Simple and friendly User Interface to break-down the need for IT
skills.
-Cross-platform solution.
Osamnia Mohamed

10. MAP the two modules of the WebELS platform:
Proposed System
WebELS Platform
Import
Learning (Create
Learning contents
off-line)
Learning
Content
Meeting (Real-Time
Presentation)
Automated
Authoring
-Record Presenter Video
-Synchronize the video
with the slides presentation
and annotation actions, etc
Export
Osamnia Mohamed

11. System Design and Methods:
• Detect presenter video and record it.
• Save the presenter video as .flv in each virtual room.
• While recording, the system will divide the streaming data into a
small parts that synchronize to the current presentation slides by
slides control (Next, Previous).
• Record the cursor movement (x, y) as well as the annotation data
including all setting data (Zoom, Color, Cursor, etc.)
• Automatic synchronization (Background process).
Osamnia Mohamed

12. System Diagram :
Capture /Archive / Process / Export/ Import/ Edit * / Save
Automated Authoring System Diagram
Osamnia Mohamed

13. System Components :
A- Recording function : based on the current flash-based meeting
system UI, the client send a control signals such as start, pause, stop
recording to the server for background process.
B- Playback function: a viewer user interface that can interact with
the server for streaming the data resources such as : video,
presentation slides, annotation, etc.
Osamnia Mohamed

14. Support Low-Speed Internet
Slide-based
Audio-video quality
Low quality Document image,
<100Kbps
Slides-based
Medium quality Document
image, 100Kbps<X<1Mbps
High quality Vector Graphics,
>=1Mbps
Osamnia Mohamed

15. For audio/video streaming recording, it can be adjusted
according to the presenter bandwidth environment
automatically :
Osamnia Mohamed

16. Flow of Operation :
Video Meeting
started
Click “Start record”
While Meeting is ON, background processing :
Save Resources data files:
1- Presenter video
2-Slides presentation (img, video)
Create Control Metadata files :
1-content_description.xml per recording
2- meta-description.xml per recording
3-annotation_metadata.xml per slide
4-cursor_xy_data.dat per event change
Click “Stop record”
Osamnia Mohamed

17. Generate 4 important files :
- Metadata-descrption.xml : contain the content description such
us title, passowrd, abstract, etc..
- content_description.xm : hold slides data information such as:
slide number, title, type, etc.
- annotation_data.xml : contains information of the whiteboard
such as cursor, pen size, text annotation, etc.
- Cursor_xy_data.dat : Contains the x and y position of the mouse
during the on-line presentation.
Osamnia Mohamed

18. Resource data synchronization:
For each slide a resource data attached to it such as video, image,
annotation and slide control.
Osamnia Mohamed

19. e-Meeting interface used for start recording
(1): audio/video stream data, (2): record button, and (3): the
slide index information.
Osamnia Mohamed

20. Learning mode interface for playback
(1): Video panel for displaying the video clips recorded of the current slide,
(2): Slide panel for displaying the current slide, (3): Content Information
panel for the slides details (number, title, and description), (4): Control panel
for managing the online learning content.
Osamnia Mohamed

21. Evaluation of the system :
To compare the proposed system with common requirements and
features of otherr systems, a catalogue of important criteria for
automated systems can be used.
These criteria does not claim to be complete ad suitable for all
kinds of evaluation, but reveals the most important aspects
(Ziewer 2006)
Table 1 present how the proposed system respond to these
criteria in comparing with another common system (Journal of
E-Learning 2007 - Stolzenberg)
Osamnia Mohamed

22. Criterion
Sub-criteria
AAS (WebELS)
StolZenberg (2007)
C01
Verbal Narration
YES
YES
C02
Live Video
YES
YES
C03
Presentation Content
Format of presentation Documents
Doc, Pdf, Video, PPT, etc
Common formats
C04
Annotations
a) Type of Annotations
Text, Freehand, rect, etc
Text, Freehand, rect, etc
b) Dynamic capture and reply of annotations
YES (Planned)
YES
c) Student Note-taking
YES
NO
YES
indirect
a) Video Editing
YES
YES
b) Content Editing
YES
NO
C)Creation of Distributed Media
YES
YES
a) Structured Electronic Lectures
YES
YES
b) Random Access
YES
YES
c)Visible Scrolling
YES
YES
a) Searchable Content
NO
Planned
b) Range of search-ability
NO
Planned
a) Lossless Reproduction
YES
NO
b) Scalability
YES
NO
c) Stream-ability
YES
YES
d) Format
SWF (Flash format)
QuickTime
e) File size and bandwidth
Several options
Several options
C05
Metadata
C06
Post-processing
C07
C08
C09
Navigation
Information Retrieval
Format of produced
Electronic Lectures
C10
Platform independency
YES (Cross-platform)
NO (MAC OS only)
C11
Synchronous Electronic
Lectures
YES
planned

23. Conclusion:
This system targets lecturers and students in the higher education, for the
flexibility and globalization of post-graduate studies. The system generates learning
contents automatically based on a real-time presentation, synchronizing the lecturer video
stream and the slides presentation by means of video clip timing. It composes of two main
functions, recording function and playback function. When the recording function is
trigged during the on-line presentation, at the back-end the automated system start
processing to record the presentation and create the learning content. The playback
function is used to review the content stored at the server side by learners, who could not
attend the real-time presentation or for further understanding of the lecture. Both recording
and playback function were designed for non-IT users by simple to use interface and to be
stable under low-speed internet. Furthermore, the automated authoring system was
implemented on the cloud-computing environment to ensure reliability and scalability of
the system.
Osamnia Mohamed

24. Thank you for your kind attention
osamnia@nii.ac.jp