Undesired Sidetracking in Virtual Classroom Systems

Abstract

Universities are faced with a difficult problem of simultaneously keep pace with increased number of students and increased extent of knowledge that is to be delivered to students. And students expect to be taught by excellent teachers who have deep understanding of the subject. A Virtual classroom concept is a possible solution to the problem of increased number of students, when a set of smaller classrooms is interconnected and a lecture is given from one site to all connected sites .But because of wide variety of information on the Internet, students taking on-line courses can easily be distracted by netsurfing onto unrelated sites either accidentally or purposely. This undesired sidetracking is hard to supervise by instructor in remote location. Here we propose an Internet Based virtual classroom model that features a centralized mouse control mechanism to provide the instructor with capability to call remote student’s attention to class and to synchronize class activities. Also included in the model is an FCFS floor control to regulate participants engaged in audio conferencing in an orderly fashion.