<title>Efficient content production for a university multimedia learning environment</title>

Abstract

The use of multimedia learning environments in educational institutions is often associated with the need of uncomplicated content production and moreover, the problem to animate users to maintain the system and its content. A recently developed prototype, 'Instant Seminar', which is being used at the University of Applied Sciences Brandenburg in Germany, can be seen as an approach for creating an easy-to-use, low-price learning management system (LMS) for multimedia learning environments. The system could be suitable as a solution for those universities wishing to extend their teachings with an electronic learning environment, but which are presently not prepared for a commercial LMS implementation, mostly due to financial or organizational reasons. 'Instant Seminar' follows the didactic concept of 'Hybrid Learning Arrangements' and we considered corresponding features for communication and personal tutoring as part of the design. Important part of the prototype is a production tool called 'Lecture Wizard', which is basically a Web-based application running on Apache and MySQL servers. It employs Windows Media Services to allow production, modification and broadcasting of AV streams corresponding with the other content of created lectures. Produced streams may have different bandwidths and the distribution of lectures is possible within local and wide area networks. Recently, 'Instant Seminar' has been further developed to serve mobile devices.