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RDE Software Development
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INTRODUCTION
The RDE (Real-time Distance Education) system was developed at Department of Technology of
Örebro University by William Walker. It allows the use of all the benefits of electronics technology in
the service of the education. The goal of that system is to get a cheaper and easier way to educate
people wherever they are. Overcoming distances and isolated places, enabling courses that are not on
the university curriculum to be available, catching up with the courses (in case students missed
lessons), enhancing professional skills and knowledge in this new technology, and much more can be
done in a safe, stable and flexible manner.
This paper deals with all the studies which were done to understand better the current system,
in order to determinate the best characteristics that future system software should have. For that
reason, the current used programs, and some alternative ones as well, have been studied in order to
understand their features and how they work.
In addition, the pedagogical aspect of the system was taken into account. So both books and
Websites were studied thoroughly. This part is considered very important since teachers and students
have to behave in a different way in this non-conventional education system. Some other distance
education systems were also analyzed by taking advantage of their results.
A user manual was written to explain how the future interface could look like and work. This
manual contains some features and different representations that we found interesting for future
system applications. This job was made before being influenced by looking at commercial systems.
Moreover, some interviews were carried out with people who somehow have been involved with the
RDE system. We found their experiences quite valuable.
Some browser based programs, which put all the software applications together in the same
program, were also studied to determine the possibility of developing future software in that way.
Finally, two software interfaces were studied to determin if the programming software interface can be
developed in a similar manner.
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