Distance learning system

Distance learning system

Provider of education services. USA

The business of our customer is to provide education services. For many years he used to teach the students in a traditional way, physically being together with students in a classroom.

Like many other legacy businesses did, our customer decided to take advantage of opportunities that the Internet brought to the market.
He needed a distance learning system to have an opportunity to conduct courses in a virtual classroom for students located in distant places.

According to the customer specifications, Novosoft designed and implemented a required distance learning system. The application enabled our customer to read his lectures over the Internet broadcasting and communicating with students using instant messaging functionality.

1. Teachers application provides the following functionality:
   • Viewing the stream provided by Video Camera;
   • Encoding the stream using Windows Media Encoder;
   • Transferring the stream into Broadcasting Server;
   • Remote administration of Broadcasting Server;
   • Viewing Broadcasting Server statistics (number of users connected, number of connects for each user, users names and IP addresses);
   • Messaging functionality provided with Messenger Component.
2. Students application provides the following functionality:
   • Connecting and disconnecting to the Broadcasting Server;
   • Viewing live video provided by the Broadcasting Server;
   • Messaging functionality provided by Messenger Component.
3. Messaging center is a server side application that provides:
   • Registration and authorization of online users;
   • Delivering messages between users.

The system is a combination of hardware and software, and consists of the following parts: application for teachers, application for students, and messaging server.

The major benefit of the solution for the customer is that now the teacher can lecture to students who are physically located in any place with the Internet access. Since students are the customers, using Web Cam allows the teacher to significantly increase his customer base and revenue inflow.

Another advantage of the solution is that the students can easily connect to the broadcasting server and access the online course. No special hardware or software needs to be purchased to allow the students to connect. That contributes to the popularity of the solution and customer base growth.

The solution is universal, since it could be used in virtually any business domain, not only in education. There are many businesses, where such interactive communication is helpful. All of them are potential users of the system.

Microsoft Visual C++, Microsoft IIS, ASP