What is gwTTS?

Overview

• The gwTTS project is supported by a Teaching-and-Technology-Inititave (TTI) fellowship of the University of Virginia.

• The gwTTS project builds scalable interactive multimedia applications that enable the installation of a grounds wide tele-tutoring system.

• gwTTS is composed of the following applications:
  • Electronic Office Hours
  • Digital Video Broadcast of Lectures
  • Virtual Classrooms
  • Remote Study Groups.

• gwTTS is a multi-platform system that runs on UNIX workstations, Intel PCs, and Apple Macintoshes.

• gwTTS is easy to use and can be started from a Web browser such as Netscape.

• Using the Internet protocols for communications makes gwTTS geographically scalable.

• By taking advantage of the multicasting backbone of the Internet (the "MBone"), a virtually unlimited number of users can simultaneously interact through a gwTTS application.

• gwTTS is a low-cost solution to interactive multimedia since it uses off-the-shelf hardware only.

Electronic Office Hours

In the Electronic Office Hours, instructors and students with access to a multimedia capable computer system can communicate electronically. This is modeled after the interactions in a traditional office hour scenario and will support:

• Bidirectional compressed digital video and digital audio enabling student and teacher to see one another.

• A shared whiteboard that supports communication similar to a traditional whiteboard. The images displayed on the electronic whiteboard can be annotated by both instructor and student.

• ``Joint browsing'' of hyper-text documents on the Worl-Wide-Web.

Click here to see a snapshot of Electronic Office Hours.

Digital Video Broadcast of Lectures

This application enables a grounds-wide dissemination of a course lecture. The application operates similar to analog video distribution over satellite networks:

• Instructor and students are located in a (traditional) classroom.

• The lecture is recorded with an analog video-camera connected to a gwTTS capable workstation.

• The workstaion disseminates the lecture to any gwTTS capable workstation on grounds.

Click here to see a snapshot of "Tele Lecture".