A Collaborative Interface for Multimodal Ink and Audio Documents

Abstract

With the increased availability of pen-based devices, it becomes interesting to conduct and to archive multi-party communication sessions that involve audio and digital ink on a shared canvas. Collaborative whiteboards do exist today but typically use complex or closed protocols for communication. As a rule, existing whiteboards are not interoperable across multiple platforms and do not support archival of collaborative sessions for later reference or analysis. We explore how various data formats may be used to represent, to transmit, to record and to synchronize ink and audio channels. We find InkML to be a suitable representation to support platform-independent digital ink in a form supporting both transmission and higher-level semantic analysis. To test our ideas we have developed a complete software implementation as a Skype add-on. This has revealed possible improvements to the page and streaming models of InkML.

An Assortment of Devices for Effecting Intelligent Tutors and Simulated Classrooms

“…The data model referred to as cmi.interactions can be used to record performance on individual questions in a SCO assessment. (10,7), RW) Weight given to the interaction relative to other interactions cmi.interactions.n .learner_response (format depends on interaction type, RW) Data generated when a learner responds to an interaction cmi.interactions.n .latency (timeinterval (second,10,2), RW) Time elapsed between the time the interaction was made available to the learner for response and the time of the first response Table 1 gives descriptions of a few of the cmi.interactions that make up the CMI data model. A single interaction describes a test item, and for a single test item, a single interaction can store information such as: type of question; the order of the responses as presented to the learner; and the learner's actual response.…”

“…A sequence of traces accumulates to form within a trace. Unlike today's collaborative whiteboards, which typically use complex or closed protocols for communication and are not interoperable across multiple platforms, InkML represents digital ink in a form that allows both transmission and higher-level semantic analysis [10].…”