Media-Rich Facilities for Live and On-Demand Interactive Distance Learning

Research on distance education has revealed that today´s and tomorrow´s generations are increasingly attracted to this mode of delivery. Realizing the market potential of distance education and its impact on tomorrow´s education, this paper presents the planning and implementation of a media-rich distance learning environment to streamline traditional - i.e., classroom-based - learning with virtual classroom through the development of media streaming technologies and video-on-demand (VOD) capability. This will allow instructors to teach and conduct teaching sessions from a remote centralized platform and allow participants to access live and archived sessions from anywhere and at anytime. Also, this research promotes a virtual and flexible learning environment that provides the same kind of enriching intellectual exchange through a computer network that in-person classes offer.