Abstract: Distributed multimedia systems provide the technology for modern distance education. However, it is important to pay special attention to user needs and preferences. User-centered design has to be applied for the entire distance education system including, human-computer interface, application, data management system, operating systems, end-to-end protocols, and networks. Furthermore, it requires a revision of the traditional Quality of Service (QoS) concept. In particular, user-friendly capture and specification of user needs and dynamic adaptation of the system are of importance. The DEPEND (Distance Education for People with Different Needs) project treats QoS negotiation as an optimization problem to relieve user and application from resource considerations and to enable optimization of the entire system. Configuration of end-to-end protocols and data models for redundant information representation enable dynamic adaptation of the system to the various user needs.
Vera Goebel received the diploma in computer science from the Friedrich- Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany) in 1989, and the PhD degree in computer science from the University of Zürich (Switzerland) in 1994. She is currently associate professor of the Computer Science Department at the University of Oslo and works as researcher at the Center for Technology at Kjeller (UNIK). Her main research interests include database systems, software engineering, operating systems, and distributed multimedia systems. She is member of the IEEE Computer Society, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the German Computer Society (GI).
Thomas Plagemann is associate professor at the Computer Science Department at the University of Oslo with main working place at the Center for Technology at Kjeller (UNIK). He received the diploma in computer science from the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany) in 1990, and the Dr. Sc. degree in computer science from the Swiss Federal Insitute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) in 1994. In 1995 he received the medal of honor from ETH Zurich for his doctoral thesis. His research interests include protocol architectures, multimedia communication, Quality-of-Service, and cooperation between communication protocols and data management mechanisms.
Last updated: Fri Oct 11 12:01:04 MET DST 1996