DEVELOPMENT OF INTERACTIVE DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEM

传统的远程教育系统大多是基于传统的教室教学，即基于大规模生产型单向广播教育教学而开发的。但是，社会的日益多样化要求迅速改变这种基于树的教师对学生的单向教育系统，以网络为基础的非常互动的教育。因此，电视会议系统作为实现交互式远程学习的潜在系统而备受关注。但是电视会议和教育在本质上有很大的不同，我们的研究明确了实现交互式远程学习系统所需的基本条件，我们的主要结论之一是，非语言信息，如运动，将发挥非常重要的作用。由于动作是非语言的，很难编码，因此教师和学生很难在他们之间分享动作信息。由于传统的电视会议系统不提供任何功能来编码这种运动，学生不理解焦点或难以与教师分享视角。在本研究中，我们从教师和学生的运动中提取特征，并根据它们的相似性进行分类，以便教师和学生共享相同的视角和焦点。这为运动类库的开发提供了依据。我们在互联网上开发了基于CORBA的书法学习系统，运动对于表达技能起着重要的作用，从设计制造一体化和机器人遥操作以及技能转移的角度来看，运动是非常重要的。我们的系统将为此类应用迈出第一步。

Most of the conventional distance learning systems have been developed based upon the traditional class room teaching, i.e.based upon the mass production type one way broadcast educational teaching. But the growing diversification of society calls for a quick change from such a tree-based teacher to students one way educational system to a network-based very interactive educational one. Thus, TV conferencing systems gather much attention as potential systems for achieving interactive distance learning. But TV conference and education are very much different in nature.Our research made clear the fundamental conditions necessary for ralizing intreactive distance learning systems.One of our major conclusions is that nonverbal information such as motion will play a very important role. As motion is nonverbal, it is very difficult to codify so that a teacher and students have difficulty in sharing motional information among them. As conventional TV conference systems do not provide any function as to codify such motion, students do not understand the points of focus or have difficulty in sharing the perspective with a teacher. Thus, the burden of a teacher becomes very heavy.In this research, we extracted features from a teacher's and students' motion and classified in terms of their similarities so taht it will facilitate a teacher and students to share the same perspective and points of focus. And this serves for developing class libraries of motion. We developed CORBA-based calligraphy learning system on the internet.Motion will play an important role for expression skill and it is very important from the point of design-manufacturing integration and of robotic teleoperations as well as transfer of skill. Our systems will provide a first step toward such applications.