International Conference on Computer Systems and Technologies - CompSysTech’2004 - IV.20-1 - Graphical User Interface of аn Interactive System for Schemes Design, Used in Distance Learning Plamen Manoilov, Vladimir Mateev, Mihail Iliev Abstract: Distance education, in which the teacher and students are separated by time and place, is currently the fastest growing form of domestic and international education. An Graphical User Interface (GUI) of an artificial intelligence system for self learning and testing of students' knowledge about electronic circuits schemes design has been presented in this paper. The system could be used in all subjects where schematic diagrams have been included. Java has been used as powerful programming language for developing platform independent interactive and computational based software that can be used through a Java-enabled Web browser. Key words: Electronic circuits scheme design, elearning, artificial intelligence and distance education; INTRODUCTION In recent years, it has become apparent that computers and technology have helped to revolutionize the notion of knowledge. Information technology can be extremely empowering, extremely motivating and extremely conducive in creating new and exciting classroom environments. However, we need to develop a better understanding of how new technologies will positively effect our learning environment [1, 2]. New opportunities are emerging in the area of web-based distance education as bandwidth and transmission speeds increase. These new opportunities are increasing accessibility and quality of distance education. The goals of this paper is to suggest an ingenious solution of a GUI, that could be used for drawing of every electronic circuit schemes [3, 5], consisting of building elements (having one or more inputs) and connections between them. An object oriented approach [8, 9] should be used to make the system easy to extend and an omni purpose. The GUI is a part of an AI system, that could be used in the distance learning environment [4, 5] for both - self learning and as a building part of a Testing knowledge module. The AI system compares the scheme created by the student (input scheme) with a model scheme, given in advance by the teacher. The result obtained from the comparing depends on the chosen from the student building elements only and the connections between them and does not depend of the position of the elements in the working area of the system and their mutual layout at all. The system transforms the electronic circuit schemes (etalon and input) to graphs, divides these graphs to a sub graphs and compares the corresponding resulting sub graphs. This way the explosion of the state space during the increasing the number of the building elements is avoid and system makes the comparison in a polynomial time. The applicability of the method is limited only to electronic circuits diagram comparison, but it is fast enough to make the comparison in a real time. SYSTEMS DESCRIPTION The system consist of two parts – a teacher’s side part and a student’s side part. The student has a convenient and simple interface, to create, edit, save and open files from a data carrier. It has the following menus: -File (New, Open, Save, Save as, Graph/Scheme, Exit); -Edit (Select all, Rotate, Delete); There is not an “Unselect all” submenu, because this operation is done by a single click by the left mouse button (further in the text only “click”) in the drawing field.