Introduction
Background of Tele-education
Tele-education has a long history, beginning with systems like those for teaching children in the Australian Outback, the British Open University, and other such organizations. These built on the idea of correspondence courses where course materials are sent periodically by post and augmented the experience with broadcasts either on radio or on TV.
The problem of student isolation was addressed partially through techniques such as telephone access or two-way radio links with teachers. At the end of the 1980s, the vast majority of distance education throughout the world was still primarily print-based. Technologies used for distance education are evolving from primarily one-way technologies and applications, such as computer-aided learning, computer-based training, and computer-aided instruction, to more two-way technologies and applications, such as computer-mediated communications and computer conferencing systems for education.
The significance of two-way technologies is that they allow for interaction between participants and tutors, and perhaps even more significantly among participants themselves. This development has allowed, and in some senses forced, researchers to look more closely at the impact of the educational environment on the student’s learning experience. In the future, it is expected that telecommunications-based technologies will become the primary means of delivery of distance teaching.
The reasons for this are as follows:
- A much wider range of technologies is becoming more accessible to potential distance education participants.
- The costs of technological delivery are dropping dramatically.
- The technology is becoming easier to use for both tutors and learners.
- The technology is becoming more powerful pedagogically.
- Education centers will find it increasingly difficult to resist the political and social pressures of the technological imperatives.
The Emergence of Tele-education
Radical changes in the computing infrastructure, spurred by multimedia computing and communication, will do more than extend the educational system, that is, revolutionize it. Technological advances will make classrooms much more accessible and effective. Today, classroom education dominates instruction from elementary school to graduate school. This method has remained popular for a very long time and will probably persist as the most common mode of education. However, classroom education has its problems, that is, the effectiveness declines with an increase in the number of students per class.
Other pressures affect the instructors, many of whom are not experts in the material they must teach, are not good performers in class, or simply are not interested in teaching. The biggest limitation of the classroom instruction is that a class meets at a particular time in a particular place. This essentially requires all students and the instructors to collect in one spot for their specified period. But with the emerging technology, these problems can be overcome.
Reasons for Studying Tele-Education
The current tele-education systems that have been applied in some countries are generally of multipoint transmission technique. It is found that this kind of transmission technique has several problems or defects, mostly raised during the application of the system. One of the significant problems raised is that, for multipoint transmission, the signals or information transmitted by the sender are not completely received by the receiver. This problem might be due to errors that occur during the transmission of the signals or information.
Another problem is the lag of transmission. In this case, the signals or information transmitted do not arrive at all the receivers at the same time. For example, the question raised by the lecturer might not be received by the students at the same time, and this is not a good environment for the tele-education system. Some receivers receive the signals earlier than others, and some later or not at all. Therefore, it is essential to study the tele-education technology from time to time to overcome these problems so that the tele-education system could provide a more effective way of learning environment.
In order to have a lecture from, for example, a very famous professor from another country, it would require him to come to our place. But the amount of money spent on paying him to give a lecture would be very expensive, and this would also cause trouble for him. However, this problem can be solved with the tele-education system in which the professor does not need to go anywhere else to give his lecture. This would save a lot of expenses and time. Another reason is that, in normal classes, the learning process would not be very effective if the number of students in a class is very big. This is because the lecturer alone cannot coordinate such a large class. With the tele-education system, one lecturer could deliver his lecture to as many students as possible effectively, in a way that a large number of students from different sites are having the same lecture at once.
Purpose of Research
The purpose of this research is to study the current tele-education system that has been applied in some countries. This study covers the background of tele-education, including its definition, the publications of tele-education, which are any papers that discuss tele-education as a whole, the performance of applied tele-education, and also the technology of tele-education, which is its network architecture. However, the main purpose of this study is to understand the tele-education system that has been applied in another country and try to implement it in our country.
Method of Investigation
Since tele-education is a very new technology that is popularly discussed today, it is quite challenging to find any books that discuss tele-education from the library. Therefore, the easiest and fastest way to gather information relating to this project is via the internet. I have surfed and found many interesting sites that discuss tele-education. Besides surfing, I have also contacted several people who are involved in this area of tele-education by email. But unfortunately, this did not really help because most of them did not reply. Besides using the internet, I also get the information for this project from the IEEE Database at the library of Universiti Telekom.
Background Study: Definition of Tele-education
What is Tele-education?
Before discussing what Tele-education means, let’s look at what distance learning is. This is because Tele-education and distance learning are closely related to each other. Distance learning is the acquisition of skills and knowledge through electronic communications that allow students and instructors to be separate in either time or space.
The key to distance learning is asynchronous learning which can be loosely defined as learning at different times. It is a highly flexible method of training because the sender and receiver do not need to be synchronized in space or time. But Tele-education is more than just distance learning. In Tele-education, not only asynchronous but synchronous learning is also made possible. In other words, Tele-education is the evolution of distance learning.
As stated before, the asynchronous learning environment is not a real-time environment. It is a self-study-based application that is accessed via the Internet to a server. The requirement for the student is only an ordinary PC with standard software and Internet access. This application is applicable for a large number of users who can access the course independently of each other. Another type of Tele-education learning environment is the combination of the lecture part, group work part, and self-study part, which is synchronous learning. It is a real-time environment.
In this environment, students and lecturers can interact with each other simultaneously. Tele-education uses the technology of video teleconferencing that allows two or more parties in different geographical areas to interact with each other or to have a learning process together. But people usually get confused about whether video teleconferencing can be considered as Tele-education as well.
Tele-education is actually different from video teleconferencing in a way that Tele-education usually involves a large number of people compared to video teleconferencing. In video teleconferencing, many people use a single monitor to see other people in other areas, but in Tele-education, students have their own monitor that can be used not only to see their lecturer and colleagues but also to send and receive educational materials.
Publications on Tele-education
There are many papers discussing Tele-education. Most of these papers cover only the general or overall scope of Tele-education. For network architecture, they describe the protocol used for the Tele-education system and its network infrastructure. Performance of Tele-education covers the performance of the service of Tele-education and also the network performance. The description of these performances is from the customer’s point of view. For the operation and management of Tele-education, it describes what should be taken into consideration in order to provide a well-managed Tele-education service.
Examples of Systems
From the materials gathered, there are generally three examples of Tele-education systems that have been applied in Europe and Canada. Those examples are:
- Tele-education NB
- Delta’s Virtual College
- ACTS Project AC052 (RACE Project Report)
The purpose of examining these examples is to try to understand the type of Tele-education systems that have been implemented, how Tele-education can be implemented, the requirements to implement it, and the considerations that should be taken into account for implementing it.
Considerations
It is not easy to find materials or papers that report the architecture of Tele-education. Most of the materials found discuss the general idea of what a Tele-education system is, such as some papers that discuss the general system of a Tele-education service offered, its advantages over the current educational environment, etc. However, I managed to find very interesting material discussing Tele-education as a whole, which is the ACTS Project AC052 (RACE Report Project).
Therefore, I have chosen this report as my main reference in studying Tele-education’s overall system description covering the architecture. There are basically five main topics that will be discussed in quite a detail regarding Tele-education as a whole in this report.
