ConferenceXP RFP 2005 Awards
Microsoft Research announced the five recipients of the ConferenceXP Research Platform RFP awards, totaling $250,000 in funding. The objective of the ConferenceXP Research Platform RFP is to help further research and teaching in the areas of real-time collaboration, wireless-enabled classrooms, and distributed learning. The ConferenceXP research platform extensions and ConferenceXP applications designed at the following universities will further enhance learning and research processes and will advance the state of the art within their domains.
ConferenceXP Research Platform Award Recipients
 Enhancing Reliability by Supporting Path-Diversity Overlay Retransmission
Wenjun Zeng
University of Missouri at Columbia
Summary This project investigates a path-diversity overlay retransmission architecture and mechanism to achieve more effective and reliable packet delivery in challenging network environments.
Abstract This project investigates the retransmission architectures and mechanisms to achieve more effective and reliable packet delivery in challenging network environments. The more traditional IETF RTP retransmission protocol will be implemented and its performance will be evaluated. More importantly, a novel overlay retransmission architecture that exploits path diversity will be investigated to improve or complement the traditional approach.
In the proposed path diversity overlay retransmission architecture, a very simple overlay retransmission network is built among the participants. Each receiver identifies a couple of good “retransmission nodes,” which will retransmit/forward the packet they receive to the requesting receiver who experiences packet loss through a different path, resulting in improved reliability and load balancing. The main thrust of the proposed overlay retransmission architecture is its ability to exploit path diversity to reduce the retransmission delay and to avoid the potential need for the original sender to retransmit a lost packet multiple times due to a severely congested path. The project is expected to significantly enhance the capability of the ConferenceXP platform beyond its current limitations.
 Visual Information Manager
Klara Nahrstedt
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Summary We will design and implement a Visual Information Manager as an extension to ConferenceXP Platform that manages the screen display resource and coordinates the user interface presentation between video, presentation, and other visual channels.
Abstract Multiple visual information channels are presented on the ConferenceXP platform, such as video streams from live cameras, PowerPoint
presentation, whiteboard, and Web cobrowsing. Therefore, the screen space for presenting the interface window of these channels becomes a critical resource
that needs to be well managed. Today’s ConferenceXP employs a simple tiled window
mechanism to spread the video windows on the screen, which does not scale well in the case where multiple camera streams from multiple sites and other applications, such as PowerPoint presentations, are presented.
In this project, we propose to design and implement a Visual Information Manager as an extension to ConferenceXP Platform that manages the screen display resource and coordinates the user interface presentation between video, presentation, and other visual channels. Specifically, we focus on the following three challenges. First, we will propose a model of the available display resource at each conference site, such as the resolution and number of display devices. Second, we will model each visual information channel in terms of its display resource requirement, and the user interest level in each channel based on the type of information it provides over time. Third, we will propose a display resource manager module that allocates display resource in real time so that visual channels that carry more interesting information will be selected and their interface windows are then composed into a nice screen layout.
 Supporting and
Enhancing Cooperative Learning with ConferenceXP-powered I-MINDS
Leen-Kiat Soh
University of Nebraska
Summary My project is to empower a computer-supported cooperative learning system called I-MINDS using the ConferenceXP platform.
Abstract The long-range goal of our research is to improve teaching and learning through technology, where agents support cooperative learning among students and support teachers in managing real-time classroom activities. Other goals include bringing the same quality of interaction and team building to distance education for both synchronous and asynchronous learning and addressing the challenge in teaching and student performing well in introductory CS courses (for
example, CS1 and CS2). Towards accomplishing the above goals, we have developed and prototyped a new technology: Intelligent Multiagent Infrastructure for Distributed Systems in Education (I-MINDS). Though I-MINDS has been prototyped and pilot tested successfully, it is faced with several inhibiting problems in terms of the enabling technologies for it to be deployed widely. These problems include the lack of readily stable and scalable conferencing capabilities, lack of security and firewall handling, inefficient digital archival of lectures and notes, and insufficient user modeling. Therefore, we propose to:
- Replace I-MINDS’s enabling technologies (that is, audio/video
and data stream transmission and firewall handling) with those of
the ConferenceXP platform to obtain a stable and reliable
conferencing and archiving backbone.
- Utilize ConferenceXP’s infrastructure to enhance I-MINDS’ user modeling capabilities to track collaborative activities such as formula tracing and correction recognition.
- Deploy ConferenceXP-powered I-MINDS in CS1 to evaluate the impact of I-MINDS in student learning performance gain, test our hypothesis that supporting students with cooperative learning technology such as I-MINDS is able to provide personalized support to students with diverse backgrounds.
 Windows Media Transcoding
Using ConferenceXP Archive Service Data
Fred Videon
University of Washington
Summary Develop tools to transcode ConferenceXP Archive Service data including audio, video, and presentation into Windows Media format.
Abstract Conferences and classes archived by the ConferenceXP Archive Service will gain value if they can be viewed in a scalable fashion by clients with lower network bandwidth capabilities, by clients behind firewalls, and by disconnected clients. The preferred archive format for these scenarios is Windows Media. This project will address the transcoding of data stored by the ConferenceXP Archive Service into Windows Media format.
The output of the transcoding process will include not only audio and video, but also presentation slides, navigation, and ink, and will interoperate well with existing applications,
such as Classroom Presenter and ConferenceXP WebViewer.
Advanced Classrooms Exploiting Tiled Displays and Student Computers
Patrick Mantey
University of California at Santa Cruz
Abstract We are experimenting with use of multiple (large and multi-mega pixel) tiled displays, allowing all lecture visuals to remain in view (and downloadable) during the lecture, and protocols for the instructor to enable and manage presentation of selected student responses and results. In addition, we will develop high-resolution and bandwidth-efficient support for high-resolution document cameras as an input to ConferenceXP.
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