In search of a smile: SMIL indexing system for multimedia learning

Abstract

In today's world of education, new methods and services are appearing every day. This paper proposes the usage of educational material "mashup", created in SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language) format. A multi-user Web application for indexing and sharing SMIL presentations is described. Presentations, located on remote servers, are fetched using different protocols, analyzed and indexed using a full-text search method. Each result gives not only "the place" but also "the time" of spoken word or phrase in the course. Afterwards, the lectures can be grouped based on their content, shared and combined together into personalized Search boxes for specific courses. The placement of Search boxes on any course Web page or LMS is done by client-side technologies, which eliminates tweaking of learning systems and usage of server-side programming. An example of usage at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing is described, together with the research results obtained.