Internet, education, and the Web

With the evolving Global Information Infrastructure (GII), we are witnessing the start of a revolution in information technology that has the potential to impact the form and structure of the university beyond anything we can currently imagine. The way we search for knowledge and information is undergoing a profound change. This technology and its future evolution has the potential of making Internet-based telelearning the new educational paradigm at local and global levels. In this paper, we expound on characteristics of this educational paradigm that make it different from traditional video-based distance learning. These include interactivity, multimedia, self-paced speed, exam-on-demand, programmed educational modules covering different aspects of the same topic at varying levels of difficulty, adaptivity, and usefulness for learning-disabled students. We present software tools based on the World Wide Web that can be used as teaching aids. They provide an integrated “notebook” interface for information access as well as computation. Some of the authors are involved in offering a “virtual” section of an introductory programming course, which is briefly described