1. What is it About

You are sitting in the class. You have a computer in front of you. It is showing your avatar in a 3D world standing in front of a steam engine made in the 18^th centaury. The lecturer is standing next to an Interactive Whiteboard. The whiteboard is divided into two parts. One part shows a 3D model of a steam engine with cross sections, so you can see inside of it. The other shows a 2D illustration of the engine with more emphasis on the abstract components.

The lecturer starts with the 3D world. He walks you through the 18^th century environment, who was James Watt and what was he about to do. You can see James Watt’s avatar having a discussion with other members of Lunar Society. They are having a heated discussion on the design of the steam engine. Fast forward and you get to see the patent for the first steam engine. You move around to see the engine form different angles, as you would do in a museum. The lecturer uses the whiteboard and starts the engine operation with his touch. The pistons are moving in both 3D and 2D version. The lecturer pauses the engines and then starts it in slow motion so you can see what happens step by step. He rotates the 3D screen so you can get a better feel. You can do the same on your own computer. Of course all of this is available for review later on.

History has shown that as we have become more technologically sophisticated, we have managed to learn more in a shorter time by effective education. When Newton was working on his laws of gravity, not many people could comprehend what he was saying. Today, any teenager in a given school can work them out. Similarly, teenagers of future need to know many subjects that we consider research today. As we are becoming more of an information society, the lecture rooms of future will need to squeeze a lot more information into students’ brains.

2. Where is the Fun

• Walking with your history teacher and your classmates in a virtual world of the ancient Aztecs may leave a long lasting effect on you. Especially if it is represented with realistic beauty and historically accuracy. Later, after school you can go back to the place and explore more by using AI guides, engage in missions to solve puzzles, or simply observe a simulation of the Aztec people as they went around their world.
• Be able to interact with others online who are studying the same subjects as you and get tips from them. Group learning is extremely efficient.
• Learn chemistry, physics, biology, genetics and other pure sciences with rich media, 2D and 3D illustrations provided to you interactively by the lecturer.
• As a student, being able to interact with the lecturer and the whiteboard using remote devices.
• Anything the lecturer says, writes or performs is logged for future reference. In addition you have access to previous years’ materials as well.
• If you don’t like the style of this lecturer, you can always login to listen to another online as if you are in his or her class.
• Using a multi-touch display, three students can collaborate together to organise a series of images and videos of biological organisms into five different categories.

3. What are its Applications

Interactive lecture rooms are not unique to schools and universities. The setup can be used anywhere that exchange of information is needed between a number of people. For example, they can be used for business meetings, teleconferencing, society gatherings, planning and scheduling (such as travelling, wedding and home refurbishment), conferences, and others.

4. How Developed is it

An interactive lecture room may be in the physical world, the virtual world, or a mixture of both. In all cases it may have the following components:

• Interactive whiteboard, or a multi-touch display, is a display much like a projector with touch sensing capability recognizing multiple different colour pens, fingers, other 3D peripheral inputs and gestures. It has the ability to log all inputs so that the entire activity of a user can be played back as required.
• A student can join the lecturer in a virtual world either through computer displays in front of them or through wearable computing.
• Classroom response systems are already in use. Students can use infra-red devices similar to remote controls to respond to multi-choice questions provided by a teacher. The system gets the student to interact more with the teacher and each other. The teacher gets to know how the class is doing and which areas she needs to focus on more.
• All students and a lecturer are naturally connected and online, so they can access extra information during the lecture. A student is capable of looking up a concept online there and then (such as wiki). This technology is already available and is becoming more common, though not fully distributed throughout the world.

Many of the components of the networked lecture are already developed or are under development. Like many technologies, the magic happens when they all come under one roof and everyone becomes familiar the system.

5. How Can it be Improved

The most important quality of the system used in a networked lecture room is that it has to be seamless. The lecturers and the students should all be able to use the system without being consciously thinking about it. For example, accessing the Internet is seamless today. If someone wants to know what a steam engine is, they know exactly what to do to get the information from the net. Sophisticated technology can be distracting if the users end up struggling against the bugs, unnatural workflow or simply getting carried away with the technology itself for its own sake. Of course, there is always a learning curve that users must go through before the technology can be used in their everyday life.

6. What Does it Lead to

In the past, a lecture was a one-sided affair: the lecturer does the talking and the students listen. This is changing gradually. The students will participate more and will tend to learn concepts in a lecture room rather than later when they revise. The old aphorism is as valid as ever:

"I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand."

As more emphasis is shifted towards learn by doing, more interactivity is required in classes. Lecturers should get students to participate in the concepts. Eventually virtual lecturers (real or AI) can also help the student, eliminating the need for students to be physically in a certain place. This is not to predict that students no longer need to attend physical lectures or classes. It means that a student will never miss a lecture, because he or she can always access the lecture as it happened, this year, last year or even in a different university.

Other applications such as business meetings will greatly benefit from this technology though they can be slower to catch up with academic institutes since they are not in the business of teaching as much.