YimaCast: A Collaborative Distributed Audio Chat System

The expanding capabilities of the Internet to handle digital media streams is enabling new applications and transforming existing applications in many areas. One of the fields that is profoundly affected is higher education. Traditionally, students have attended classes in lecture halls on college and university campuses. The next step was distance education, enabled via video satellite links. More recently, new communications media have broadened the potential audience and allowed anybody with a broadband Internet connection to potentially receive audio, video and slide presentations on their computers. The YimaCast project aims to provide a foundation for collaboration tools that would make the student experience more interactive. Our first project is a multi-user audio chatroom system called AudioPeer that is designed to allow groups of students to discuss assignments, allow teaching assistants to conduct lab sessions, and enable student questions and feedback during lectures. Our goal is to provide users with interactive audio experience, which is scalable, practical, integratable and extensible with new features.