A directable and designable course recording system

The Open Course Ware (OCW) project of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has opened a new trend for asynchronous learning via the internet in recent years. The MIT OCW project aims to share knowledge and makes the educational materials to be learned via the internet by people all over the world. Some studies start to explore the effectiveness and phenomenon related to the MIT OCW. Nowadays, some other OCWs are constructed to support the excellent idea. Because of the fast improvement on portable vehicles such as smart phones and reading devices, we can imagine that the OCWs will play an essential role in ubiquitously synchronous and asynchronous learning in the future. Although, the idea of the MIT OCW shows promising learning style for learners; however, the quality of these courses is therefore not good enough for learners. This paper aims to provide a system for manufacturing courses with better quality in a more easy and convenient way. The characteristics of the proposed system are directable, designable, passive and user-friendly. Using the proposed system, the teacher can layout the components of a screen with a variety type of media files, such as slide, word processor and video files, before recording and the built layout can be saved and reused for other courses. Meanwhile, with a media server, a recording course can be broadcasted through the internet intermediately to provide the option for synchronous learning. In addition, with two more digital video (DV) cameras, the director can select a better shot on the teacher's face by activating the hot swapping function and switching the shots smoothly among the DVs. More importantly, the results demonstrate that the quality of recorded courses is satisfactory.