Design of a guided-asynchronous graduate course in multimedia signal processing

This paper describes the design of a new guided-asynchronous graduate course in multimedia signal processing (MMSP). MMSP expertise is increasingly critical for many working engineers from diverse disciplines. Targeted students have some prior DSP-related experience, but need an introduction to MMSP fundamentals before participating in more specialized courses. A modular structure, asynchronous design and application focus are used to meet the educational and logistical needs of working engineers. Industry and university partners use MMSP technologies to provide remote access to pre-configured laboratory experiments and educational resources, and support for distributed collaboration and guided learning. Thus hands-on experience with MMSP technologies is integrated with learning about underlying MMSP concepts. A central element of the course design are on-line, multimedia topical learning modules which provide evaluation of student level of expertise, guidance in choosing course activities to effectively meet learning goals, student practice and projects, and feedback and evaluation of student performance