Copyright 2002 William Overington

Thursday 7 February 2002

A potentially important area of application of the DVB-MHP (Digital Video Broadcasting - Multimedia Home Platform) system is in distance education.

This document addresses two particular issues that are potentially part of any discussion on the use of the DVB-MHP system for distance education, namely the issue of tutorial support and the issue of qualifications.

Tutorial Support

Tutorial support for distance education is important. Certainly an able student using good distance learning materials can achieve good progress, yet some students are not as able as others and almost every student will find a time when some form of help from another person, such as a tutor, is needed.

The DVB-MHP system is capable of supplying to end users in their homes substantial interactive multimedia educational packages with no return link whatsoever to the central broadcasting computer.

The DVB-MHP system also provides, as an implementation option that may, but need not, be implemented, a capability to send information by a telephone link either back to the central broadcasting computer or to some third party location.

In view of the fact that where there is a telephone line connected to a DVB-MHP terminal the information sent from the end user terminal need not necessarily go to the central broadcasting computer, I feel that it is important to remember that an information link from the end user to elsewhere could also be achieved by sending a letter using the postal service, or by sending an email from a computer that is not connected to the DVB-MHP terminal, perhaps sent the next day from an internet café, or even by simply talking to a tutor at a local college.

Thus the possibility of feedback from an end user using a Java program on a DVB-MHP terminal in the home to someone who has skills in the subject being studied, and of receiving a response to that feedback, is not limited to those people who have a telephone line connected to their television set. Once stated, this is obvious and has perhaps been obvious to many readers all along, yet I feel that an explicit mention of this factor here is important lest a presumption take root in the world of DVB-MHP provision that no feedback from an end user is possible without a telephone line connection. Certainly, direct, immediate, on-line electronic feedback from the DVB-MHP terminal to the content provider may well need a telephone line or a telephony circuit of some kind, yet I feel that it is important to remember that educational feedback channels and the return link of the DVB-MHP specification are not the same.

Assessment

An important aspect of education is the provision of assessments and examinations, both so that people can find out how much they have learned and also as an indication to other people that someone has reached a certain standard of achievement.

In a free to the end user distance education system which is supplied either by the internet or by broadcasting it is possible to supply learning texts and learning software on the basis that once the supplying system has been set up, there is no additional cost to the supplier of the learning texts and learning software in having some additional students.

In addition, for broadcasting, there is no additional load upon the central computer system regardless of how many students are simultaneously accessing the learning package. If one sets up a system to broadcast learning texts and learning software to a specific location or set of locations then the cost of supplying the information to one student or to many students is the same.

When, however, the matter of assessments and examinations arises, there is no free economy of scale as for adding additional viewers of broadcasts, for each assessment or examination needs the attention of a human assessor on an individual basis. Twice as many assessments may not need twice as much assessor time, as some parts of an assessment may take place in an examination setting where, within limits, a few extra students need no more invigilators: however, any individual aspects such as time spent in marking examinations rises as the number of students rises, maybe then not quite linearly but an increase nonetheless.

The issue of qualifications for distance education that is provided upon the DVB-MHP platform is a big issue. Any qualifications must be properly invigilated and assessed and that raises issues of financial cost and access.

One solution would be simply to say that distance education provided upon the DVB-MHP platform is not for qualifications, thereby avoiding for the broadcaster issues of provenance of such qualifications and of access to examinations by end users.

However, people learning by distance education using the DVB-MHP system may feel that they would like to have qualifications, or some recognition of their learning.

A partial solution

I have therefore tried to devise an infrastructural technique that does not purport to provide qualifications yet does provide useful feedback to end users and to third parties whom end users may choose to contact, such as potential employers and colleges, yet which technique has the potential to ease the route towards qualifications and may hopefully act as a catalyst to more qualification gaining opportunities becoming available.

I am calling this infrastructural technique "ready-to-test". The idea is essentially that standardized tests may be made available as content on DVB-MHP channels and that an end user may attempt such tests. There is not a return link to anywhere. A person taking the test may, if he or she passes the test in private, declare that he or she is "ready to test" on that particular test under examination conditions. The name ready-to-test implies that no qualification has been received, just that someone considers that he or she is ready to take the test.

How might this be useful?

A person could seek employment and write to the employer that he or she is ready to test on a list of specific tests at interview, or an employer could specify in a newspaper advertisement for a job that candidates should be ready to test on specific tests. The tests would be readily available upon the DVB-MHP platform. The intention is that the tests would normally accompany a learning package that teaches the knowledge and skills that are tested.

Such tests would be intellectual property and intellectual property rights in them would exist.

Licensing of such ready-to-test tests is an important issue as there may be potentially a big market for them if the free to the end user distance education policies that I am advocating as being a prime area for Java applications running upon the DVB-MHP platform gain wide acceptance and take off.

A broadcaster publishing the tests could perhaps specify

• free use in the home;

• free use if an employer tests, as part of a job interview process, a person who has written in speculatively saying that he or she is ready to test on one or more specific tests;

• use under a fee-paying licence for an employer who advertises vacancies where the employer's requirement is for job applicants to be ready to test for specific tests in the available range;

• no use allowed by an employer to test existing staff;

• free use where a person in a position of responsibility at no charge writes a letter, either a specifically addressed letter or a "to whom it may concern" letter, stating that an individual has been observed satisfactorily completing the test by the writer of the letter;

• use under a fee-paying licence where an educational institution uses the tests to test students on an institutional basis, the level of fee, which could potentially be zero in some circumstances, being decided upon the circumstances, such as whether fees are charged to students and whether the educational institution is a profit oriented organization or a non-profit organization;

• other use under a fee-paying licence, the level of fee, which could potentially be zero in some circumstances, being decided upon the circumstances.