A DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEM WITH CUSTOMIZABLE

SCREEN LAYOUTS FOR MULTIPLE LEARNING SITUATIONS

Hiroyuki Nagataki

†

, Koji Noguchi

‡

, Ryo Katsuma

⋆

Yukiko Yamauchi

⋆

, Naoki Shibata

⋆⋆

, Keiichi Yasumoto

⋆

and Minoru Ito

⋆

†

Center for Faculty Development, Okayama University, Okayama, Japan

‡

Financial Systems Division, Hitachi Solutions, Ltd., Tokyo, Japan

⋆

Graduate School of Information Science, Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Nara, Japan

⋆⋆

Department of Information Processing and Management, Shiga University, Shiga, Japan

Keywords:

Distance learning, Computer-supported education, User interface, Learning situation, Screen layout.

Abstract:

In this paper, we propose a new distance learning system that can adapt to various styles of learning activity.

We assume that the system is used in distance classes with multiple live-streaming videos. Our system has

functions to change the screen layout to best suit for the current learning situation for each of the participants

in a class. The system also has a function to efﬁciently monitor the behavior of many students at a time.

These functions enable us to adapt various learning activities in distance learning classes. We implemented

a prototype of the proposed system and evaluated it in experimental classes. We conﬁrmed that our system

improved the activities in the experimental classes.

1 INTRODUCTION

In recent years, the development of information tech-

nologies has enabled inexpensive distance learning

systems with many features, and accordingly, such

systems are getting more important in higher educa-

tion.With these systems, we can provide learning op-

portunities to remote students who have difﬁculties in

getting to schools due to physical or geographical re-

strictions.

As one of the platforms for distance learning sys-

tems, a video conferencing system has been widely

used. Typical video conferencing systems such as

Polycom (Polycom, inc., 2010) provide high-quality

video and audio communication, which enables users

to obtain awareness information such as the facial ex-

pressions and gestures of remote users.

Some recent video conferencing systems focus

mainly ondistance learning, and they havesome func-

tions useful for distance learning activities, such as

screen sharing, chat board, and response analyzer.

One of the examples of this type of systems is Adobe

Acrobat Connect (Adobe, inc., 2010) (referred as

Connect, hereafter).

On the other hand, these existing systems have

the following problem. There are many situations

of learning and teaching such as a lecture, practice,

group work or seminar, and the situations may change

quite often even during a class. However, most video

conferencing systems are designed for sharing an en-

vironment with a single style; all participants share

a common display layout, and the role for each par-

ticipant is ﬁxed throughout a class. This would be

suitable for traditional lecture-based teaching, but not

so suitable for other kinds of activities such as ac-

tive learning. For example, a class may be conducted

in a group work situation, in which students are di-

vided into several groups and each group of students

works independently while the teacher observes the

activities of each group and gives advice as needed.

In this situation, we need multiple learning environ-

ments for each group. The teacher’s role in this situ-

ation is a facilitator/advisor, not a lecturer. After they

ﬁnish the group activity, each group makes presenta-

tions in front of all other participants. In this situation,

the presenters, who are students, have a role which is

more like the lecturer, and other participants includ-

ing the teacher listen to the presentations.

In this study, we assume that a computer screen is

the primary user interface for distance learning, and

Nagataki H., Noguchi K., Katsuma R., Yamauchi Y., Shibata N., Yasumoto K. and Ito M..

A DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEM WITH CUSTOMIZABLE SCREEN LAYOUTS FOR MULTIPLE LEARNING SITUATIONS.

DOI: 10.5220/0003340300940102

In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2011), pages 94-102

ISBN: 978-989-8425-49-2

 2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

we focus on ﬂexibly changing screen layouts for each

participant in a class according to the current learn-

ing situation. We propose a new distance learning

system that provides: (1) a mechanism that adapts

the screen layout for each user according to the situa-

tion of learning and teaching, and the role of the user,

such as a lecturer, listener or group member; and (2)

a mechanism that helps teachers and sometimes stu-

dents to monitor other students.

This paper is organized as follows. In Section 2

we present related works in the area of distance learn-

ing. In Section 3 we present a brief overview of our

proposed system, and in Section 4 show the imple-

mentation of the system. In Section 5 we discuss the

results of an evaluation of the proposed system in ex-

perimental classes. Finally, in Section 6 we conclude

this paper.

2 RELATED WORK

Distance learning can be roughly grouped into two

styles: the asynchronous style and the synchronous

style. In asynchronous distance learning, students can

study anytime and anywhere, using archived videos.

They can communicate with teachers and classmates

via e-mails and internet forums. In synchronous dis-

tance learning, participants in different places attend

a class at the same time and communicate with each

other in real time via video conferencing. In this study

we focus on synchronous distance learning.

As we noted in Section 1, the latest distance learn-

ing systems are based on video conferencing sys-

tems (Polycom, inc., 2010; Microsoft Corp., 2010),

with some additional functions for learning activities,

such as text chat, screen sharing and response analysis

(Adobe, inc., 2010). These systems often assume that

teaching is in the traditional lecture style, in which

mainly a teacher speaks and students only passively

listen. Much research for distance learning systems

assumes lectures in this traditional style. In (Roesler

et al., 2009), the authors focus on a mechanism for ef-

ﬁcient delivery of video and audio from the lecturer to

the students. In (Shi et al., 2002), the authors propose

a Smart Classroom that offers several user interfaces

to facilitate lecturing activity of a teacher in distance

learning, delivering proper lecturing information to

remote students. But these systems are not designed

for various learning situations but only for the tradi-

tional lecture style.

On the other hand, a 3D virtual environmentis one

of the recent approaches for distance learning (Mon-

ahan et al., 2008; Gupta and Kaiser, 2004). Some re-

search has also used the 3D virtual environment Sec-

ond Life for distance learning (Ritzema and Harris,

2008; Pham et al., 2008). In a class with a 3D virtual

environment, representations of all participants and

the classrooms are constructed with computer graph-

ics. The participants can communicate with each

other and perform many kinds of learning activities in

the virtual world. It is easy for participants to recog-

nize the current learning situation. Visualization with

3D computer graphics enables participants to perform

learning activities in ways that are similar to activities

in real classes (Bouras et al., 2004a; Bouras et al.,

2004b). For example, some of the participants can

perform group work by making their avatars gather at

a particular room in the virtual world, so that they can

work independently of other participants, hiding the

activities of other groups. However, some systems

of this kind require a lot of operations of users, and

some people may have difﬁculties in performing the

required operations. Moreover, it is difﬁcult to convey

awareness information through 3D graphics.

The two kinds of learning methods described

above, video conferencing systems and 3D virtual en-

vironments, are suitable for different situations. The

differences come from differences in the information

displayed on the computer screen. This implies that

if the users can change the information displayed ac-

cording to the learning situation, the learning system

would be suitable for various learning situations. In

this paper, we mainly focus on this viewpoint, and we

develop a distance learning system that allows users

to easily change the information displayed according

to the learning situation and the roles of the users in

the class.

3 THE PROPOSED SYSTEM

In this section, we describe the environment, an

overview, and example use of the proposed distance

learning system.

3.1 Assumed Environment

In this subsection, we explain the operating environ-

ment, the assumed learning situations, and the usage

of the proposed system.

Operating Environment

We assume that one or more teachers use the proposed

system at a time, and in a lecture they teach in front

of a white-board or a screen while using a computer

connected to the network to see a computer display

on which student information is displayed. Teachers

use cameras, keyboards, mice and/or microphones as

input devices.

A DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEM WITH CUSTOMIZABLE SCREEN LAYOUTS FOR MULTIPLE LEARNING

SITUATIONS

Students use computers connected to the network,

and they use cameras, keyboards, mice and/or micro-

phones as input devices when they attend a class at

their home or other places.

Learning Situations

A class consists of multiple learning situations such as

lectures, practice sessions, group work, and presenta-

tions. We assume that a class is conducted transition-

ing between multiple learning situations.

Usage of Proposed System

The proposed system provides a function to change

the screen layout of each user during a class according

to the learning situation.

When a teacher designs a class with the proposed

system, he/she inputs the learning situations, the re-

lationships between the situations, and screen layouts

corresponding to each learning situation into the sys-

tem. Once a teacher input this information, the system

stores the information so that it can be used in other

classes.

It is mainly the teachers who can change the

screen layout to match the learning situations during

a class. However, in some learning situations where

students take the lead, such as group work or a presen-

tation, students also are allowed to change the screen

layout.

3.2 Overview of the System

The proposed system provides functions for (1) lay-

out setting, (2) transition between learning situations,

and (3) monitoring. Each of the functions is explained

below.

3.2.1 Layout Setting

A teacher uses the layout setting function to prepare

a class. With this function, a teacher can deﬁne (i) a

mode, a state correspondingto each learning situation,

(ii) a set of roles of users for each mode, and (iii) a

screen layout used with each role.

A screen layout consists of one or more frames.

A teacher can freely conﬁgure the size, position and

displayed information of each frame. For example, a

frame can display live video or text for practice.

3.2.2 Transition between Learning Situations

The function for transition between learning situa-

tions provides conﬁguration and management of tran-

sitions between deﬁned modes, changing screen lay-

outs to match the learning situation. The proposed

system displays mode change buttons corresponding

to each mode, and pushing a button selects the cor-

responding mode to start. However, if a class has

many learning situations, the user may have trouble

in ﬁnding the desired button. To reduce this difﬁculty,

the proposed system displays only the buttons corre-

sponding to modes that can be transitioned to from

the current mode, based on the relationships between

learning situations predeﬁned by a teacher. This fea-

ture enables a user to quickly ﬁnd the button for the

next mode and to change the screen layout smoothly.

3.2.3 Monitoring

The proposed system provides a monitoring func-

tion to enable efﬁcient monitoring of participants in

a class. When many students participate in a class, a

participant may not easily see the behaviors of other

students through a display of a limited size. The pro-

posed system provides functions for dynamically ad-

justing video size, and automatically selecting stu-

dents to be displayed. With these functions, the fol-

lowing screen layouts can be used; (i) A layout that

consists of several frames, each of which displays a

student’s video and changes to another students’ in

turn. (ii) A layout that consists of one big frame and

several small frames. In the small frames, students’

videos are displayed in turn. A user can choose one

student to be monitored in detail and watch him/her

in the big frame.

3.3 Example Use of the Proposed

System

In this subsection, we show an example design of

modes and screen layouts for a sample class using the

proposed system. We assume that this sample class

includes ﬁve learning situations which are Lecture,

Practice, Group Work, Question and Answer and Stu-

dent Presentation. Therefore, it is needed to prepare

Lecture Mode, Practice Mode, Group Work Mode,

Question and Answer Mode and Listening to Presen-

tation Mode for both a teacher and a student to use the

proposed system. Additionally, Student Presentation

Mode is also needed as a student mode in the system.

Figure 1 and 2 show part of an example design

of screen layouts for a teacher and a student in two

different modes.

Figure 1 shows an example screen layout for

Lecture mode. In the teacher’s layout, all four

video frames display students’ video, each of which

changes to the video of another student automatically

after a certain period so that over time all students

can be displayed in it. In the student’s layout, the big

frame displays the video of the teacher, and the other

CSEDU 2011 - 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education

Figure 1: Screen Layout for Lecture Mode (Left: for teachers, Right: for students).

Figure 2: Screen Layout for Practice Mode (Left: for teachers, Right: for students).

three small frames display the video of other students.

The video of students in the small frames also changes

periodically, so that a student can watch all other par-

ticipants.

Figure 2 shows a screen layout for Practice mode.

Only a teacher can make the transition from Lecture

mode to Practice mode. In this layout for both stu-

dents and a teacher, a text about practice is displayed

in the main frame. The remaining frames are different

between the students and the teacher. In the layout for

students, one video frame for the whiteboard and one

video frame which displays students in turn are dis-

played on the left side. In the layout for teachers, two

video frames displaying students are displayed on the

left side. A teacher can stop changing displayed stu-

dents and focus on a particular student at any time in

this layout.

Figure 3 shows a transition graph for the class. In

this class, students can transition from Lecture mode

to Question and Answer, Group Work or Practice

mode, but not to Presentation or Listening mode. In

the Presentation Mode, one student will be a presen-

ter and others will be listeners. Therefore, transition

from the Group Work Mode in Figure 3 can be either

to Presentation Mode or Listening Mode.

The proposed system also provides a function to

synchronize the modes between students and teach-

ers. For example, if a teacher makes a transition to

Lecture Mode from any neighboring mode in Figure

3, the screen layouts of all participants including all

students will change to the one corresponding to the

Lecture Mode.

Figure 4 is an example of the mode change but-

tons shown on the screen, when the current mode is

Group Work mode. Following the mode transitions

shown in Figure 3, only the buttons corresponding to

the neighbor modes in the transition graph are shown.

A DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEM WITH CUSTOMIZABLE SCREEN LAYOUTS FOR MULTIPLE LEARNING

SITUATIONS

Figure 3: Transition Graph.

Figure 4: Mode Change Buttons in Group Work Mode

(Left: for teachers, Right: for students).

4 IMPLEMENTATION OF THE

PROPOSED SYSTEM

In this section, we show the internal structure and de-

tails of an implementation of the proposed system.

As a trial, we used Java and OpenCV (Open Source

Computer Vision Library) (Willow Garage, 2010) to

implement the proposed system.

The proposed system consists of ﬁve modules as

shown in Figure 5: (1) the capture module, (2) the

input/output module, (3) the communications control

module, (4) the situation management module, and

(5) the state transition management module. The cap-

ture module deals with the video and voice of users.

The input/outputmodule controls the input from users

and the output to the users. The communication con-

trol module controls the communication of video,

voice, and other control information between users.

The situation management module manages the infor-

mation on screen layout changes caused by signals of

mode change, such as pressing mode change buttons.

The state transition management module maintains

the state transition between modes and corresponding

Figure 5: Architecture.

screen layout for each mode.

Each module exchanges information as shown in

Figure 5 where each terminal of the teacher or a stu-

dent corresponds to a user node that executes the pro-

gram containing all ﬁve modules. The state transition

management module (5) also is executed at a server

for coordination. In the following, we describe the

detailed implementation of each module.

4.1 The Capture Module

The capture module maintains the video of users cap-

tured with a web camera and the audio of users cap-

tured with a microphone.

The video of each user is captured from a webcam

via OpenCV, and then it is buffered, converted into

JPEG format, and after that, sent to the input/output

module and the communications control module. The

audio of each user is captured from a microphone by

using the Skype API (Skype4API, 2006), and then it

is buffered, and after that, sent to the communication

control module to provide voice communication be-

tween users.

4.2 The Input/Output Module

The input/output module consists of an input sub

module that deals with input from users, and an out-

put sub module that controls output to users.

The input sub module sends the input from key-

boards, mice, etc. to the communications control

module. Additionally, it sends information about

mode changes to the situation management module

such as clicking the mode change button. The out-

put sub module displays video on the screen and out-

puts audio to the speakers. The video of the user is

provided to the input/output module by the capture

module and the video and the audio of other users are

CSEDU 2011 - 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education

provided to the input/output module by the commu-

nications control module. The video of the user and

other users are displayed according to the screen lay-

out provided by the situation management module.

4.3 The Communications Control

Module

The communications control module controls the ex-

changes of video, audio and information about situa-

tion changes between users.

A sender user node sends the intended receiver

user node information such as video and audio ob-

tained from the capture module and the input from the

mode change button obtained from the input/output

module. A receiver user node sends information re-

ceived from other user nodes to the input/output mod-

ule and the situation management module. The mod-

ules communicate between user nodes via TCP con-

nections.

4.4 The Situation Management Module

The situation management module manages screen

layout changes. This module sends the mode change

button input provided by the input/output module and

mode change requests from other users provided by

the communication control module to the state transi-

tion management module. Additionally, this module

sends the new screen layout and modes to which the

system can transition from the current mode to both

input/output module and the communication control

module. The information is obtained from the state

transition management module.

4.5 The State Transition Management

Module

The state transition management module maintains

the screen layout of each mode and controls the tran-

sition between modes. A teacher should input data

about the screen layout for each mode and state tran-

sition between modes before a class.

Based on the predeﬁned state transition between

modes, this module computes the modes to which the

system can transit from the current mode and sends

that information to the situation management mod-

ule. Then, the situation management module sends

information about mode change buttons to be dis-

played on the user’s interface in the current mode to

the input/output module. The mode transition is man-

aged in a client-server style with a central state tran-

sition server for coordination purposes. This network

Table 1: Experiment 2: # of students viewed.

Exercise 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th

system Proposed Connect

Teacher 1 3 9 6 3 6 9

Teacher 2 6 3 9 3 6 9

Teacher 3 9 6 3 3 6 9

topology enables broadcast of state transition infor-

mation to all user nodes without constructing a com-

plete communication network between all user nodes.

The state transition management module has not

been implemented yet. In the following experiments,

the mode change buttons for all modes are displayed

at each node and each mode transition is done by hav-

ing all users click the mode change button for the next

mode.

5 EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

To evaluate the effectiveness of the functions of the

proposed system, we conducted several experimental

classes. This section provides brief overview of the

experiments and results.

5.1 Overview of the Experiments

For comparison with the proposed system, we used

Adobe Acrobat Connect. Unlike the proposed sys-

tem, Connect only supports sharing one screen layout

among all participants at anyone time. It also displays

videos of all participants in a grid layout in one frame.

Finally, only the teacher can change these screen lay-

outs. In these experiments, we used low resolution

video so that we can focus on the evaluation of layout

transitioning, not quality of video transmission.

We performed three types of experiments as fol-

lows:

Experiment 1. One teacher and twelve students

participated in this experiment, which was aimed at

testing the effectiveness of changing screen layouts

for different learning situations. The students were

divided into two groups of six (Group A and Group

B). Each group had two classes (Class 1 and Class

2), each of which took thirty minutes; ten minutes

for a lecture, ﬁve minutes for practice, ﬁve minutes

for group work, and ten minutes for students’ pre-

sentations about the results of the group work. Each

Class had one learning topic (Class 1: User interface,

Class 2: Software copyright). Group A used the pro-

posed system in Class 1, and used Connect in Class 2.

Group B used Connect in Class 1, and the proposed

A DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEM WITH CUSTOMIZABLE SCREEN LAYOUTS FOR MULTIPLE LEARNING

SITUATIONS

Table 2: Experiment 1: impressions of the system (four-grade evaluation, 1: bad – 4: good).

Proposed Connect (no answers)

Usability (Group A) 3 3

(Group B) 2 3

Understanding lectures (Group A) 2 4

(Group B) 1 3 1

Observing other students (Group A) 1.7 2.3

(Avg.) (Group B) 2.0 1.2

system in Class 2. After the two classes ﬁnished, stu-

dents in both groups answered a questionnaire to eval-

uate the effectiveness of the proposed system for their

learning activity.

Experiment 2. Three teachers and nine students

participated in this experiment, which was aimed at

testing the effectiveness of different numbers of stu-

dents being displayed. The participants performed six

sets of ten minute exercises. In each exercise, the stu-

dents should answer a question in ten minutes. How-

ever, some of them did other things on purpose, such

as sleeping or playing with their cell phones. The

teachers (Teacher 1, 2, and 3) observed the behavior

of students during the exercises through the proposed

system or Connect, and noted down the names of neg-

ligent students they found. For each exercise, each

teacher used a different screen layout. As shown in 1,

the screen layouts displayed different numbers of stu-

dents. After the experiment, the teachers were asked

to ﬁll in a questionnaire to evaluate the effectiveness

of different numbers of students being displayed.

Experiment 3. Six out of the nine students from

Experiment 2 participated in Experiment 3, which

was aimed at testing the effectiveness of the proposed

system screen layouts for student presentations. For

each question solved in Experiment 2, one student

was chosen and made a presentation about the ques-

tion and solution as a lecturer, while the other stu-

dents listened to the presentation through the pro-

posed system or Connect. The proposed system of-

fered different layouts for a lecturer and for listeners.

The lecturer used a screen layout with several video

frames, each of which displayed a video of students

and changed the video to that of another student peri-

odically. Listeners used a layout with one frame dis-

playing video of the lecturer. When they used Con-

nect, both the lecturer and listeners watched the same

screen layout that displayed videos of all participants

in a grid layout. Again, participants ﬁlled in a ques-

tionnaire afterwards.

5.2 Results

Table 2 shows the results of the questionnaire for stu-

dents in Experiment 1. From these results, there is no

signiﬁcant differenceindicating that the proposedsys-

tem is more useful than Connect. In fact, in evaluating

the usability of the system to observe the behavior of

other students in a class, Group A and Group B had

opposed results. Students commented in the question-

naire that the low resolution of the video cameras and

the instability of the system, both of which are not re-

lated to the changes in screen layout, were the disad-

vantages of the proposed system. On the other hand,

they also commented that changing screen layouts to

match the learning situation of a class was effective

function for distance learning.

Table 3 shows the evaluation results by teachers

in Experiment 2, monitoring the behavior of students

through the proposed system and Connect. Again,

there was no signiﬁcant difference between the four-

grade evaluation of the proposed system and Connect.

From teachers’ comments, the main disadvantage of

the proposed system in this experiment also was cam-

era resolution. On the other hand, there were several

positive comments from teachers that the functions of

changing the size of the video and rotating the appear-

ance of students were effective for monitoring a lot of

students.

Table 4 shows the results of the questionnaire

about Experiment 3. Although the low resolution

video was a disadvantage of the proposed system in

the previousexperiments, ﬁve out of six evaluated that

monitoring the behavior of students with the proposed

system was equal to or more effective than with Con-

nect. All students also evaluated that the proposed

system is superior to Connect about feeling a pres-

ence of being in a real classroom (Feeling presence in

a real classroom in Table 4). Lecturers in Experiment

3 (Table 4 A, E and F) answered that the proposed

system was effective for monitoring listeners during

a presentation (Usability of the layout for presenters

in Table 4). The functions of changing screen lay-

outs and customizability of the layout were cited by

all participants as the main reason for positive evalu-

ation of the system.

CSEDU 2011 - 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education

100

Table 3: Experiment 2: evaluation of monitoring the behavior of students (four-grade evaluation, 1: bad – 4 :good).

Items Teachers 3 persons / display 6 persons / display 9 persons / display

Proposed Connect Proposed Connect Proposed Connect

Facial expression / gestures A 2 3 3 3 2 3

B 4 4 2 4 3 4

C 4 4 3 3 3 3

Avg. 3.33 3.67 2.67 3.33 2.67 3.33

Working situation A 3 4 3 4 2 3

B 3 4 3 4 4 4

C 4 4 2 3 3 3

Avg. 3.33 4 2.67 3.67 3 3.33

Table 4: Experiment 3: Impressions of the system (four-grade evaluation).

Questions A B C D E F Avg.

Facial expressions (Proposed) 3 3 3 3 4 4 3.3

(Connect) 3 2 3 4 4 3 3.2

(1: bad – 4: good)

Feeling presence in a real classroom 3 4 3 4 3 4 3.5

Usability of the layout for presenters 3 3 4 3.3

(Comparison, 1: Connect – 4: Proposed)

5.3 Discussion

In all the experiments, the participants considered the

functions of the proposed system, such as changing

screen layouts and automatic or manual change of

video of students, as effective approaches to under-

stand the current situation of the class and give a feel-

ing of being in a real classroom. These results suggest

that different screen layouts are more effective for dif-

ferent learning situations, so adapting the screen lay-

out to match the learning situation can contribute to

better learning by distance learning students.

However, the experiments did not produce signif-

icant differences between the proposed system and

Connect in quantitative terms as measured by the

questionnaires. Comments by participants suggested

that unimplemented functions may have affected the

evaluation of the usability of the system. Future work

will focus on constructing a more complete prototype

and further experimentation to better evaluate the us-

ability of the system.

Another area for future work will be to improve

the resolution of the lecturer’s video. Participants in

Experiment 1 and 2 commented on this as one of dis-

advantages of the system. However, in Experiment

2 and 3, different participants had different evalua-

tions concerning the displays of the learning situa-

tion. These results suggest that the main problem is

not how to stream high quality videos between all

user nodes, but how to best customize the resolution

of each video in the screen display according to the

role of the user in the learning situation and the video

that the user wants to focus on.

6 CONCLUSIONS

In this paper we proposed a system supporting dis-

tance learning with multiple learning situations. We

focused on enabling ﬂexible screen layout changes,

providing functions for layout setting, layout transi-

tion according to the learning situations, and efﬁcient

monitoring of participants.

From the result of the experiments to evaluate the

proposed system, we conﬁrmed that the functions for

layout transition corresponding to the change of a

learning situation is effective for distance learning ac-

tivity, and the result would be further improved by

improving the implementation of the system.

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