Shared virtual presentation board for e-Meeting in higher education on the WebELS platform

In this paper, the development of a shared virtual presentation board (VPB) for real-time e-Meeting on the Web-based e-Learning System (WebELS) platform is introduced. WebELS is a general-purpose e-Learning system to support flexibility and globalization of higher education in science and technology. In WebELS, the Meeting module consists of online presentation and video conference system, and the combination of both allows the creation of a so-called virtual room for e-Meeting applications where participants convene via the Internet. Online presentation features synchronized slide control between the presenter and the listeners for slide changing, scrolling, zooming, cursor positioning, and playback control for video embedded on the slide. It also features online annotation that allows the presenter to write using a pen function on the slide display panel. The system has video conferencing function that provides an audio-video communication among the meeting participants. This paper discusses briefly the video conference system, and focuses on online presentation based on slide-based synchronization and the development of VPB. VPB is a shared object that resides on the server that is updated every time the presenter client makes mouse events and is periodically accessed by client system in order that listener’s presentation viewer synchronized with that of the presenter.