A Case Study of a University Distance Education System Based on Multimedia Technology

Introduction

With the development of the times and the continuous advancement of the network construction level in colleges and universities, the traditional teacher-centered classroom-teaching methods have become outdated (Aslam et al., 2020). To promote quality education and cultivate the innovative thinking of college students, it is necessary to use modern information technology to create an excellent environment for independent learning, and fundamentally reform the traditional ways of teaching and learning (Biziuk et al., 2021). At present, multimedia-teaching methods are gradually becoming one of the core contents of modern education and training technology (Cheng et al., 2022). It promotes the reform of training concepts, training content, training methods, and creates a new teaching method for the field of education and training technology-distance education (Daraghmeh, 2021). China’s distance education began with correspondence education in the 1950s. From the beginning until today, China’s distance education has experienced three different transformation processes: the correspondence education mode (mainly printed materials), the radio and television education mode (with audio and video recording), and the modern distance education mode (mainly network and computer multimedia) (Dekusar & Davydova, 2020). With the development of modern information technology, modern distance education has become a new form of education. It is the main means to build a lifelong learning system in the era of knowledge economy. It focuses on modern distance education, integrates face-to-face teaching, correspondence teaching, self-study, and other teaching forms, uses a variety of media to contact teachers and students, and carries curriculum content.

With the development of computer networks, the current distance education, based on its flexibility, simplicity, reliability, compatibility, and other advantages, has become an important way of distance education (Grigoryan et al., 2020). Is distance education as efficient as traditional face-to-face education? Research shows that successful distance education is no less effective than traditional education (Grytsenko et al., 2021). It breaks the time and space boundaries of traditional teaching and enables people to realize the joy of free access to knowledge (Gribkova et al., 2020). It can use network technology to share educational resources, improve the learning mode, enhance communication between students and between students and teachers, open, a long-distance, large-area interactive teaching system, and through interactive teaching, allow students to gain an in-depth understanding of the difficulties in a course, as well as improve the ability of image thinking and creativity (He, 2020).

Summarizing the existing network education forms, it is evident that the network-based distance education systems are all based on or structured so that the educational resources are located on a central server, and students learn through a client or a browser (Jurayev, 2023.). If students want to communicate with one another, the message must be forwarded by the server (Nikou & Maslov, 2023). The advantage of this form is that functions such as user management and security control can be easily realized, and the system maintains well; thus it is able to take advantage of the convenience of communication and the abundance of resources brought by the Internet (Kuleshova et al., 2020). There are also some auxiliary teaching systems that appear in the form of general websites, such as forums, and their software structure design is mainly based on the idea of modularization (Li., 2020). The system with this structure has the problems of difficult deployment, poor cross-platform, poor adaptability, and high management, maintenance, and upgrade costs (Lee & Tan, 2020). In order to change this situation, many studies have been carried out on the software architecture of the visual distance education system at home and abroad, such as introducing streaming media technology and component technology, exploring the use of framework models, etc., but the results are not very obvious (Mohd Nor, 2021).