College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Unveiled the
Research Achievements of "NTU Virtual Teacher"

The "Taiwan/Japan Academic Forum," which was jointly organized by Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing and the College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of NTU, was convened on May 17th in the International Conference Room of the 2nd Student Activity Center, to which Managing Director of Microsoft Research Asia Dr. Hsiao-Wuen Hon attended with Assistant Managing Director Dr. Wei-Ying Ma, Assistant Managing Director Dr. Bai-ning Guo, leaders of various research groups and core members, plus thirty some Japanese professors who had research cooperation with Microsoft, and related scholars from National Taiwan University, National Tsing-hua University, National Jiao-tong University, and National Cheng-Jung University. At the Forum, the attending scholars exchanged their tips on research, and Microsoft arranged two lectures plus two system exhibitions to demonstrate their newest research achievements.

Dr. Lin-Shan Lee, Dean of the College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, also presented his newest research achievement—"The NTU Virtual Teacher" at the Forum. The main reason that Dean Lee designed the "The NTU Virtual Teacher" software system is to allow the social public who do not have dozens of hours in this age of knowledge explosion and in this ever changing world to have a convenient and useful lifelong learning tool. The learners can log onto the website of "NTU Virtual Teacher" anytime and anywhere, and acquire the knowledge he needs from famous teachers and efficiently achieve the purpose of "Learning on Demand."

The NTU Virtual Teacher is an internet software system that utilizes audio-visual teaching, and simulates a live human teacher at the online learner's side, directly inculcating the contents of the courses that the online learners choose. The system will automatically dissect the audio-visual contents of the courses into portions, and automatically extract the key words of each portion while providing a map of the relations of the key words. Each portion of the course will have a pre-established audio-visual summary, with the provision of relevant information pertaining to its length and content, just like the teacher is directly guiding the student on his side.

Inasmuch as the "NTU virtual teacher" can automatically analyze the contents of audio-visual teaching of a real teacher, and construct the knowledge structure of a whole course based on slides and key words, the learners are thus allowed to find the knowledge that he needs based on his learning interest, his background knowledge, and the time he has. Learners no longer need to spend dozens of hours to listen to a course from beginning to end, nor will they encounter a course whose contents are beyond comprehension, because the system will tell them that the knowledge of a particular portion is based on the knowledge of which preceding portions, so the learners can choose to watch those portions to achieve their learning goals.