A streamlined system for building online presentation archives using SMIL

Abstract

The demand for and expectation of ubiquitous access to multimedia online learning resources are much higher amongst computer science students than in other fields of study. Previous systems providing internet access to digital video or audio recordings of lectures have been disappointing or ineffective as a learning experience or excessively complex and time-consuming from the educator's point of view. This paper describes a new approach to building an online presentation archive of lectures, based on a relatively new Recommendation from W3C called SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language) [8]. It describes a highly efficient and integrated system for capturing, indexing, searching and delivering online presentations without relying upon proprietary technology.