A New Modular E-Learning Platform Integrating an Enhanced Multimedia Experience

Information and communication technologies are rapidly disrupting the way we interact with each other in this new connected world. The transmission of multimedia information is becoming mainstream also thanks to the availability of several commercial systems. Also in the educational environment, these novel technologies are making it possible to create and manage learning objects in ways which were unthinkable a few years back and this represents the driver for the creation of new approaches to education. Seeing the ubiquitous nature of the environments where web users interact, this work starts by analyzing the state of the art in the multimedia communication field focusing on those technologies which allow to reach a context awareness. Being able to sense the conditions where the device is used and quickly react to its changes is important in order to guarantee a flawless quality of experience. Part of this work focuses on the dynamic multimedia aspects, analyzing the latest trends in web streaming technologies and proposing a new framework for tackling some of the upcoming issues for such systems. In modern learning environments the presence of multimedia is massive. Multimedia objects are constantly created worldwide and this introduces new needs, such as the creation of proper repositories to store them and platforms to share them through the web. After analyzing the state of the art in educational technologies, focusing in particular in the content repository field, this work drafts a set of minimum requirements to follow in order to create a novel educational platform, ready to face the increasing number of needs of the future learners. In this context, the author proposes FARE, a novel architecture designed for both educators and learners in order to ease their everyday learning experience. The modularity of such a platform allows to benefit from a large set of modules, most of which present some of the multimedia aspects highlighted beforehand. Both qualitative and quantitative evaluations are presented exploiting the fully working prototype of the FARE e-learning platform deployed in the University machines. This work is meant to highlight how the advances in the multimedia field represent a clear advantage for the community of learners, creating novel ways of interacting with the learning objects and increasing the overall quality of experience.