Interactive Remote Instruction Research Articles

IRI-h, a Java-based distance education system

We used our Original Interactive Remote Instruction (IRI) system to teach scores of university classes over the past years at sites up to 300 km apart. While this system is a prototype, its use in real classes allows us to deal with crucial issues in distributed education instruction systems. We describe our motivation and vision for a reimplementation of IRI that supports synchronous and asynchronous distance education. This new version, called IRI-h (h for hetergeneous), is coded in Java and executes on several different platforms. IRI-h extends IRI both to multiple platforms and heterogeneous network experiences with the developing prototype, including preliminary performance evaluation, and also unresolved issues still to be addressed.

Use of Web technology for interactive remote instruction

Advancements in Web technology are changing learning paradigms. In this paper we relate various learning paradigms to existing technologies and describe two approaches in IRI to use Web technology for synchronous sessions: Web steering and control and automatic content synthesis using the Web. IRI (for Interactive Remote Instruction) is a computer-based system to support distance education developed at Old Dominion University; it is being used to teach courses with sites up to 200 miles apart.

Virtual Classrooms and Interactive Remote Instruction

SUMMARY Through the integration of high speed computer networks and interactive multimedia workstations, the IRI (Interactive Remote Instruction) system creates a geographically dispersed virtual classroom. Each student participates in a lesson using a personal workstation which can be used to view multimedia lectures, to make presentations, to take notes in a multimedia notebook and to interact via audio/video and shared computer tools. We compare this approach with other modes of instruction and describe lessons learned from the instructor, student and technical perspectives.

Interactive distance learning over intranets

Many distance learning systems claim to be interactive, but few can offer two-way video, on-the-fly interaction and application sharing. To address these limitations, our research group built the Interactive Remote Instruction (IRI) system, which links sites over a high-speed intranet, allowing students at geographically dispersed satellite campuses and community colleges to take a class together. Access from home PCs through a Windows NT port is planned but not yet available. IRI improves on the Old Dominion University's Teletechnet system in five areas: video resolution, asymmetrical video presence, interaction, teacher support and computer simulations.

The Role Multimedia of Multicasting in ManagingInteractive Distance Learning Systems

This paper discusses the important role of multicasting in designing, implementing, and managing interactive multimedia distance learning systems. This is achieved in the context of IRI, an Interactive Remote Instruction system for distance learning built at Old Dominion University. IRI is an Internet-based system which integrates continuous multimedia, shared applications and a variety of multi-user collaborative utilities. In this paper, we concentrate on the process architecture and dynamic multicast group handling as they pertain to managing multimedia resources, and show how they support robustness and short response time to user actions. IRI uses raw IP multicasting for audio and video streams and reliable multicasting for resource management and data sharing. The system is scalable (uses multicast for inter-process communication) and expandable(partitioned into a setof autonomousbutcooperating components).