The distributed and interactive courseware environment (DICE)

An architecture for delivering interactive multimedia courseware to schools, known as the Distributed and Interactive Courseware Environment (DICE), is being developed on a testbed consisting of (1) a network-resident architecture supported by a highspeed ATM WAN, (2) a classroom-resident architecture consisting of PC LANs in participating school classrooms, and (3) a satellite communications infrastructure serving as a communications link between the network- and classroom-resident architectures. The network-resident architecture stores and distributes courseware to the receiving classroom-resident architecture via satellite, which has the capability to support widespread, low-cost distribution to dispersively located schools. This paper provides an overview of the DICE system and then focuses primarily on the design of the network-resident architecture