Towards virtual university department: running a graduate program via Internet

A growing demand is apparent for flexible and high level distance education, generated by frequent changes of knowledge in engineering applications of informatics. Computer based modeling and simulation as a practical application of virtual technologies has gained wide usage in industry environment. The well established concept of Open University in United Kingdom and the recent rapidly developing concept of virtual university employing the Internet to the full allow students to utilize similar teaching conditions as in regular universities on the grounds of suitable computer-assisted systems. On one hand, Internet-based communications enable fruitful between students and instructors, and, on the other, successful co-operating work by the department leader and academic staff involved in the study program. This work reports on one such case study for a part-time M.Sc. study program in automation and control system engineering, both as a distant learning program and a distantly run enterprise during last 4 years. This experience showed that it seems to be logical to view the modern university as an extension of the virtual world in engineering.