Hybrid Architectures for Large-Scale Blended Classrooms: A Case Study
Ranjeet Kumar, T Suchith Soman, Sankaran Narayanan, Kamal Bijlani · 2018
Blended Classrooms (BC) have become popular in the milieu of higher education in India with several Indian Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) initiatives adopting this format as well. The size of BC participants is growing at a much rapid pace, of the order of several hundred, to even a few thousand students. Numerous challenges need to be reckoned with in the design of interactive virtual classrooms (VCs) for such large-scale BCs: network bandwidth, server scalability, reliable access to Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) platforms. This paper presents a hybrid terrestrial-satellite multicast internet architecture to address some of these challenges developed under the aegis of Amrita Virtual Interactive e-Learning World's (A-VIEW) BC research. A-VIEW service integrates terrestrial Internet Protocol (IP) networks and satellite networks using overlay multicast network architecture, to ensure reliable experience. The bandwidth-sensitive multicast framework fosters server scalability. The wider reachability and consistent in-class experience of the proposed architecture were validated in several real-world VC trials.