A Cloud-based Automated Authoring System to Support e-Learning in Higher Education Under Low- Speed Internet Mohamed Osamnia*, Sila Chunwijitra, Arjulie John Berena, Hitoshi Okada, Haruki Ueno Abstract— Institutions all over the world are continuously exploring ways to use ICT in improving teaching and learning effectiveness. In higher education, the teaching methodologies are changing from the classroom-based methodology to the so-called Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). To meet the social demands for internationalized higher education, we propose a new automated authoring system for recording and capturing an on-line presentation in the WebELS system. The proposed system enable generating eLearning contents automatically based on a real-time presentation by synchronizing the presenter video and slide-documents materials, which is very valuable for students who did not grasp specific topics, to repeat important parts of the presentation. Furthermore, for those who were not able to attend the live presentation, they can access to the learning contents created at the server side for later reviewing. The automated system is proposed to work on the cloud-computing environment to ensure reliability and scalability of the system. The design concerns non-IT users, and low-speed Internet users, such as in the developing countries. Keywords—e-Learning, Higher Education, Automated Authoring, on-line presentation, recording, WebELS I. Introduction The rapid advancement of technology and the informatization of society are very important factors that prepared the way for the changing methodologies of higher education. From the traditional classroom-based methodology to the use of information and communications technologies (ICT). It is a new trend to facilitate the interaction and communication between teacher and student, and also to meet the social demands for a flexible educational system. In higher education, students utilize ICT materials to support their learning and research activities. Based on the characteristics of higher education, internet-based e-learning and on-line meeting systems are strongly required to support distance education and boost up the learning curve of learners [1], [2]. Mohamed Osamnia, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies Tokyo, Japan Sila Chunwijitra National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC), Thailand Arjulie John Berena, Hitoshi Okada, Haruki Ueno National Institute of Informatics Tokyo, Japan. The traditional classroom-based presentations deliver contents in a one-size-fits-all manner to students [3]. It wastes time of more advanced learners by presenting introductory concepts and often is too fast for slow learners who do not possess the required prerequisite knowledge. Therefore, recording presentations is becoming an increasingly important part of the e-learning content generation in several academic institutions. It is proved to be the fast and efficient way of creating contents for e-learning [4]. Reviewing a recorded presentation might give a real feeling that can be experienced by all senses, that is users view the presentation materiel, see and hear the presenter talk as if one is actually attending a physical lecture. Furthermore, students can access to these learning contents whenever and wherever they wants. In order to acquire every relevant aspect of the live presentation, three basic streams have to be captured. First and foremost, the teachers verbal narration which accompanies the slides presentation. These two sources are considered being essential streams, whereas the live video should be considered in its importance for distance learning. Furthermore, several users technological requirements are requested, e.g., (1) Convenient and quick to create and edit contents, (2) able to edit in the last saved editing stage, (3) able to use the system without software installation, and (4) support structure based navigation to enable some features such as next, previous slide, play and pause video. A Web-based e-Learning system known as WebELS is a platform that supports flexibility for higher education. WebELS, a server-client system, provides two modules - (1) Learning module for on-demand self-learning, and (2) Meeting module for real-time distance multimedia meeting. To enhance the capability of WebELS in supporting e- Learning in Higher education, as well as the range of use of the system, we proposed a new automated authoring system concept that generates rich multimedia e-learning contents based on a real-time presentation for later off-line reviewing. The proposed system map and create a link between the two modules of WebELS platform, e.g., meeting module to learning module to be an “All-in-one” platform that supports Higher Education activities and meets the social demands. Furthermore, this work is based on the Authoring system proposed by Chunwijitra [5], and the e-Meeting system designed by Berena [6,7]. In Chunwijitra system, he developed an authoring system to creates e-Learning contents in an off-line mode based on a recorded video and slides document, and the instructor have to synchronize the materials International Journal of Advances in Computer Science & Its Applications – IJCSIA Volume 4: Issue 3 [ISSN 2250-3765] Publication Date : 30 September,2014 1