Towards developing an integrated multimedia framework for enhanced e-Learning

In recent years, information and communication technology and multimedia technology have increasingly altered the landscape of the educational field particularly in higher education. In that, e-learning in its broad sense makes use of network and computing resources for bringing general education to the potential benefits of distant education and face to face classroom education. The amount of multimedia support facilitated by the e-learning systems has given significant consideration in order to make distance education as effective as classroom education and make the blended leaning experience more effective. While the technology is moving toward a multimedia rich learning management system, its practical deployments is still far away, due to many unsolved technical and pedagogical problems. In this paper we discuss the design and implementation of a prototype system umeLMS which features an integrated framework that interacts with a rich set of hypermedia contents and provides ubiquitous access. The main focus of this design is threefold: first input integration by which multimedia can be incorporated into the LMS in various ways. Second, content Integration by which different forms of hypermedia is linked to the course contents. Third, access integration by which a wide array of mobile devices are supported for multimedia content browsing which creates a real u-learning environment by enabling active participation in the learning/teaching process.