Mimic: a Multimedia Course for Teaching the Operation of Communications Equipment

 The paper presents a multimedia interactive course for teaching the operation of communications and audiovisual equipment. The objectives of the course are the following: providing a tool for undergraduate students which enables the self-learning of the equipment basis and operation, helping the students to get used to the laboratory equipment and trying to improve their understanding of the equipment operation, use and theoretical basis, supporting the students during the practical classes and speeding up the laboratory classes. The course must be considered as a supporting tool for the laboratory classes, not as a substitution of these classes. The course consists of a set of videos which explain the theoretical fundaments and the operation of several communications and audiovisual instruments, such as spectral analysers, oscilloscopes, RF detectors, video cameras, vectorscopes, video and TV trainers, etc. The videos are indexed and synchronised with oral explanations, support texts, schemas and graphics, and integrated in a unique visualisation framework, in this way the student can browse the video or section of the video which is of interest and visualise the video or section supported by the oral, textual and graphical explanations simultaneously. The multimedia course can be accessible via web or locally on a PC. The course has been implemented thanks to a specific edition, synchronisation and serving tool developed by the Distributed Real Time Applications and Systems Group (SATRD) of the UPV (Polytechnic University of Valencia). The realisation and edition of the videos, the textual material and the supporting graphics has been conducted by a group of professors of the Polytechnic School of Gandía and the School of Telecommunications Engineering of the UPV. The course has been prepared for undergraduate students of Telecommunications Engineering and Audiovisual Communication, all of them belonging to the UPV, and will be set up and evaluated in the practical classes of several syllabus during the 2003/2004 term. Index Terms  audiovisual equipments, communications, interactive course, laboratory, multimedia, teaching, telecommunications, web.