The research presented in this dissertation studies and describes how technical standards, protocols, and application programming interfaces (APIs) shape the aesthetic, functional, and affective nature of our most dominant mode of online communication, the World Wide Web (WWW). I examine the politically charged and contentious battle over browser…

Quickly accessing the contents of a video is challenging for users, particularly for unstructured video, which contains no intentional shot boundaries, no chapters, and no apparent edited format. We approach this problem in the domain of lecture videos though the use of machine learning, to gather semantic information about the videos; and through…

More video streaming technologies supporting distance learning systems are becoming popular among distributed network environments. In this paper, the authors develop a multimedia authoring tool for adaptive e-learning by using characterization of extended media streaming technologies. The distributed approach is based on an ontology-based model.…

Searching for relevant information on the web is an important aspect of distance learning. This activity is a challenge for visually impaired distance learners. While sighted people have the ability to filter information in a fast and non sequential way, blind persons rely on tools that process the information in a sequential way. Learning is…