Issues in delivering multimedia content to mobile devices

The scalability of a computer system is its response to growth. It is also depended on its hardware, its operating system and the applications it is running. Most distributed systems technology today still depends on bus-based shared memory which do not scale well, and systems based on the grid or hypercube scheme requires significantly less connections than a full inter-connection that would exhibit a quadratic growth rate. The rapid convergence of mobile communication, digital broadcasting and network infrastructures calls for rich multimedia content that is adaptive and responsive to the needs of individuals, businesses and the public organisations. This paper will discuss the emergence of mobile Multimedia systems and provides an overview of the issues regarding design and delivery of multimedia content to mobile devices.

Effects of training peer tutors in content knowledge versus tutoring skills on giving feedback to help tutees’ complex tasks

This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of training tutors in content knowledge of a particular domain versus training them in tutoring skills of pedagogical knowledge when tutoring on a complex tutee task. Forty-seven tutor-tutee pairs of fourth year secondary school students were created and assigned to one of two treatments. Twenty-two tutors received training in content knowledge and the other twenty-five tutors in tutoring skills. Tutors formulated written feedback immediately after the training. Tutees first interpreted the tutor feedback and then used it to revise their research questions. The results showed that tutors trained in tutoring skills formulated more effective feedback than tutors trained in content knowledge. In addition, tutees helped by tutoring-skills tutors found the feedback more motivating than those helped by content- knowledge tutors. However, no differences were found in tutee performance on revision. The findings are discussed in terms of the set-up of this study and implications for improving the effectiveness of peer tutoring.