Web-Based Learning: A View of IEEE´s Approach [Education]

As part of the ongoing effort to provide valuable services to its membership, IEEE has started the "Expert Now" program, intending to provide technical information, in the form of Web-based lectures. IEEE Societies have developed more than 60 tutorials, and RAS has contributed a lecture by Prof. Henrik Christensen on simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) to Expert Now. This paper presents a brief summary of the lecture and the impressions formed on the IEEE approach to Web-based learning and the course itself. They seemed not to exploit the capabilities of Web-based interaction to their fullest. However, once the SLAM course started, the opinion had to be reconsidered. After a Hollywood-style beginning, making you expect the appearance of a movie star rather than a cute robot, the course develops in a very smooth and pleasant way, with interesting and informative animations and clear comments. The course consists of about 50 slides, organized into four main parts: an introduction; a discussion of uncertainty models; the presentation of the main models for environment representation; and examples of an indoor and an outdoor case.