Computer Enhanced Automated Lecture

Stand-up lectures are the prevailing method to deliver educational material to students in secondary and postsecondary education. The popularity of lectures must in part be due to their efficiency in communicating information. The cost and effectiveness of lectures varies widely with the instructor’s experience, the quality of presentation, and the ability of the instructor to engage the students who are listening and watching. The proposed Computer-Enhanced Automated Lecture (CEAL) applies the concept of ubiquitous computing to create a computer administered “lecture” which is lower in cost and is more effective in transferring information than a traditional lecture. CEAL creates an audio-visual presentation that engages the student with control of pace and content, facilitation of note taking, cognitive assessment of student comprehension for remediation, and tracking student interaction to measure engagement with the material. Human factors engineering of the human-computer interface for instructor authoring and student use will reduce cognitive impedance; resistance to, and distortion of the lesson in the instructor-student communication channel. The CEAL software will ultimately be hosted within the Open Source course administration system and be cost-free to institutions to install and use.