Preparation, Authoring and Presentation for Distance Education with Tango Interactive

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Preparation, Authoring and

Presentation for

Distance Education with

Tango Interactive

Nancy McCracken

David Bernholdt

Northeast Parallel Architectures Center at

Syracuse University

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Abstract

• Requirements to set up Distance Education

– Focus on labs, but direct desktop is possible

– Hardware requirements

– Network Considerations

– Software requirements

• Authoring

– Preparation of materials

– Preparation for interactive tools

• Presentation

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Acknowledgments

• The experience in using Tango Interactive for distance education comes from two sources:

• Teaching a semester course from Syracuse University to Jackson State University for four semesters, starting in the fall of 1997.

– This work was funded (in part) by the DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Program at the U.S. Army Corps of

Engineers Waterways Experiment Station (CEWES) Major Shared Resource Center through Programming Environment Training (PET) through contract DAHC94-96-C-002 with Nichols Research

Corporation.

– Curriculum development was largely funded by the College of Engineering and Computer Science at Syracuse University.

• Training courses from Syracuse University and Ohio State University.

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Hardware Requirements

• Lecturer’s workstation(s):

Can be either one or two machines.

With two machines, one can handle course materials and the other

can handle audio/video.

• _{At the recipient site,}

–

students can have each have their own workstation receiving

course materials and handling audio/video streams. (requires

the most network bandwidth)

–

there can be one workstation receiving course materials and

displaying them on a large screen and handling the audio/video.

–

Recommended for each student to have course materials and

audio, with only one video per lab.

–

Issues about microphones at workstations are quite tricky and

will be covered in more detail elsewhere.

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NPAC/JSU configuration

• The network is a combination of DREN and Internet.

NPAC Web Server JSU Proxy

Server

Java Tango Server

…….

URL of

Curriculum Page Teacher’s View of Curriculu

m Page

Participants at JSU Teacher/Lecturer at NPAC

Student’s View of Curriculum Page

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Network Considerations I

• Network requirements should be considered carefully.

–

Minimal bandwidth requirements per stream

for TANGO:

Audio 13kb/s, Video 15 kb/s, Courseware 120 kb/s.

• Audio:

instructor’s workstation sends one stream to each

BV audio client. If students use headsets, this is one client

per student.

• _Video:

_{transmitted point-to-point like audio.}

• Courseware:

the web server delivering slides/pages to

student browsers. This will be point-to-point, unless the lab

has a

proxy web server.

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Network Considerations II

• Calculate bandwidth requirements. E.g. a T1 line (1.5Mb/s) can carry 100 a/v streams or 10 simultaneous course pages in the absence of any other traffic.

– But this is quite misleading as critical issue is quality of service

– _{A few missed audio packets and the lecture is a write-off}

– So in unclear (to us) fashion “buy” quality of service with bandwidth

• Best to have one person responsible for monitoring these issues

– Are clients alive

– Is A/V correct

– What fraction of packets are dropped

– Is routing strange ….

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Software Requirements

• _{We recommend that all recipient sites set up a}

_{proxy web}

server with caching capability

, such as Netscape Proxy

server.

• If possible, all sites should use the

same version of

Netscape Navigator

. This helps to minimize Tango

interactions with browser-specific bugs.

• Use a

robust HTTP server

to provide the course

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Testing - 1, 2, 3!

• _{The most important thing about your configuration is}

to

thoroughly test it with each Tango tool

that you are

going to use before class.

• Agree in advance

which Tango server and interface

you are going to use. Be sure to mention which time

zone the test will take place in.

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Authoring Lecture Materials

• Almost any materials on the web can be shown through the Tango Shared Browser.

– Documents prepared in an authoring tool such as Microsoft Word or PowerPoint can be saved as HTML and placed on a web server.

– Any other web pages that contain information with the following limitations:

• Shared Browser cannot show pages with nested frames or new browser windows.

• Other pages that are not designed for this kind of viewing may have images that take too long to download, or type fonts that are too

small, or other characteristics not suited for classroom use.

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Lecture Slides (such as PowerPoint)

• The same rules apply as for regular classroom use as far as

making slides clear and visually appealing

.

–

_{Type font sizes in the range of 20 to 24 pts.}

–

Diagrams and images are nice.

• But there are other restrictions due to the fact that each slide

must download to both the instructor and students over the

network.

–

_{Although dense slides are not good in general, try to put}

enough information on each slide so that you

don’t have to

change slides too often!

(Avoid slide backgrounds that take

up 1/3 of each slide with the background image!)

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Showing Diagrams

• Tango Interactive has two drawing tools:

–

Paintbrush

- this is a very simple drawing tool, but is fairly fast.

Nancy uses it to draw diagrams on-the-fly during class. She can

even draw equations with symbols like “capital sigma”.

–

Whiteboard

- this is a fully functional drawing tool with an

arcane interface. It is slower because it allows you to change all

sorts of drawing properties with popup boxes. I use it if I need

to prepare a diagram ahead of time. Unlike Paintbrush, when

the students connect, what is already drawn will show.

• In the future, you will be able to load previously drawn

pictures.

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Guidelines for Instructors

• It is important to

practice the delivery

of TANGO-based

classes until you are comfortable with the tools and windows.

• _{One of the biggest differences that you will experience in class}

is the

lack of feedback from facial expressions

of students.

• Expect distance classes to

move a little slower

than local

classes. There is more transition time and words must replace

gestures and body language.

• The audio quality typically used in TANGO is roughly

telephone-quality sound, not broadcast quality. You should be

careful to

speak clearly

and perhaps a little more slowly than

with a face-to-face class.

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More Guidelines

• _{Try preparing a script for the class with the URL’s}

that you are going to use, descriptions of diagrams,

etc. Ahead of time, you can put URL’s in the

Shared Browser and draw diagrams in

Whiteboard.

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Attention Factors

• Our experience is that the

attention of remote students

wanders more easily

than in face-to-face classes. Probably

because there is less stimulus and sense of connection with the

instructor

–

Make

course materials colorful and visually interesting

–

Try to make things

more interactive

: switch tools, have web

pages that students interact with.

–

If possible, ask

questions

with audio. Without that, you

could give

opinion polls and quizzes

. Nancy prepares ahead

of time a web page with a form with the questions.

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Interaction Issues

• If students have headsets, pause every so often to ask for questions - even with classroom video, it’s hard to see when a student looks like they want to ask a question.

• If you’re using chat for questions, pause every so often as well. Furthermore, set up a separate chat for student questions and for support personnel conversations.

• Don’t have long periods of silence. The students always think that the audio must have crashed. If you do have to be silent for a while, such as typing something into the support chat, announce that you’ll be away for a little while.