About
In the mid-1990s, a team at KMi, led by Prof. Marc Eisenstadt, pioneered early voice-on-the-Net experiments for the Open University (OU), exploring the potential of synchronous communication for distance learning. These trials led to the development of the Lyceum voice groupware system, which was prototyped in the late 1990s, tested by foreign language students, and deployed in its first mainstream course in 1999. After proving its value through experimental trials, Lyceum became part of the OU’s delivery technologies and was maintained and extended by the Learning & Teaching Services team.
Lyceum was a groupware system that provided students and tutors with voice conferencing and synchronous visual workspace tools, all running over the standard internet via a single dial-up phone line. It used a Java client/server architecture to handle complex networking requirements, including multi-way voice communication and synchronous shared displays, scalable to hundreds of users, over standard modem connections through various internet service providers.
Lyceum’s audio-visual workspace allowed participants to ‘break out’ into rooms, share visual tools such as whiteboards, concept maps, and textual documents, and screen-grab materials from digital sources. They could vote on issues and signal their wish to speak by raising a virtual hand. Materials were often prepared offline, saved to disk, and imported during meetings. Courses also distributed digital resources for tutors to annotate and discuss during sessions.
Lyceum interface
Research Reports
Description of Lyceum’s rationale, architecture, and first mainstream deployment:
Buckingham Shum, S., Marshall, S., Brier, J. and Evans, T. (2001). Lyceum: Internet Voice Groupware for Distance Learning. Euro-CSCL 2001: 1st European Conference on Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Maastricht, The Netherlands, March 22-24, 2001. Available as: Technical Report KMI-TR-100, Knowledge Media Institute, Open University, UK [kmi.open.ac.uk/publications/papers/kmi-tr-100.pdf]
