A lecture scene playback system using digital picture-card show for distance learning

Recently, computer-aided slide presentations have been commonly used at lectures in universities. To improve their educational quality, this paper presents an Web-based lecture scene playback system using the digital picture-card show for distance learning. In this system, fine still images of lecture scenes containing the lecturer, the blackboard, and the screen, are periodically taken by an off-the-shell digital photo camera, and the lecturer voice is recorded into a digital file by a personal computer during a class. Then, the digital picture-card show to play back the lecture scenes is edited by selecting one image and the voice file interval corresponding to one lecture scene defined as the time span of teaching one slide page by the lecturer. The picture-card show is delivered to students through the World-Wide Web system on demand. We have implemented and applied our system to one course for freshmen in our department. The system performance and the questionnaire results from students show that our system is very efficient and practical to improve understandings and motivations of students for study of this course.