JCAT: COLLABORATIVE ACTIVE TEXTBOOKS USING JAVA

First author: Marc H. Brown
Address: Digital Systems Research Center, 130 Lytton Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94301, USA
E-mail: mhb@pa.dec.com
 
Second author: Roope Raisamo
Address: Department of Computer Science, University of Tampere, P.O. Box 607, FIN-33101 Tampere, Finland
E-mail: rr@cs.uta.fi

Abstract: This paper describes JCAT, a Java-based system for building Web-based collaborative active textbooks on algorithms. JCAT augments the expressive power of Web pages for publishing passive multimedia information with a full-fledged interactive algorithm animation system. The system is built in such a way that views of a running program may reside on different machines, thereby making JCAT particularly well-suited for electronic classrooms. In such a setting, an instructor controls the animation, while students view the animation by pointing their Web browsers at the appropriate page.

Web location: The paper can be downloaded from http://www.cs.uta.fi/~rr/ftp/jcat.ps.Z.