MULTI-LOCATION LEARNING-ACTIVITY STATE MANAGEMENT FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION

摘要

A method for delivering distance education for real clients, each either a teacher client or a student client, at multiple teaching sites and a system using the method are provided. A multi-layer arrangement is used to arrange computing servers to be one first-level server and one or more second-level servers each communicable with the first-level server. Each server serves real clients located in a pre-determined site. Furthermore, each server sets up a virtual client to execute the teacher client's activity command so as to locally generate application-specific data, which are then stored in this server. When a communication link to a student client is re-established after an activity interruption, resynchronization of the student client's learning-activity state with the teacher client's is regained based on the locally-generated application-specific data stored in the server that serves the student client without a need to burden other servers.

主权项

1. A computer-implementable method for delivering distance education that involves a plurality of real clients at multiple teaching sites, one of the real clients being a teacher client for issuing an activity command to advance the teacher client's learning-activity state, the remaining real clients being student clients for executing the activity command that is received, the method comprising:
arranging a plurality of computing servers to be one first-level server, and one or more second-level servers each communicable with the first-level server via an individual first communication link, wherein an individual server is configured to serve an individual real client located at a pre-determined teaching site and to communicate with said individual real client via an individual second communication link, and wherein the servers are co-configured to perform that the activity command sent from the teacher client to the server that serves the teacher client is relayed to the remaining servers through the first communication links, and to perform that the activity command available at all the servers is relayed to the student clients through the second communication links used by the student clients; configuring the individual server to set up a virtual client that executes the activity command received by the individual server for locally generating application-specific data, and to store the locally-generated application-specific data in the individual server; and when any of the first and the second communication links is re-established after an activity interruption, restoring one or more learning activities missed by any student client that has been affected by the activity interruption, wherein the restoring includes re-synchronizing the learning-activity state of the affected student client with the teacher client's learning-activity state based on the locally-generated application-specific data stored in the server that serves the affected student client.