A Protocol for computer mediated education across the internet
Chris Trathen, A. S. M. Sajeev · British Journal of Educational Technology · 1996
Abstract Changes in the workplace have had an impact on methods of training and education. There is a growing need for flexible methods of course delivery. The economics of courseware development highlight a need for more efficient use of courseware, pointing to geographically distributed Computer Mediated Education as a cost‐effective way of sharing these development costs. Object‐orientation is a software development paradigm that is making sweeping changes to the information technology industry. An object‐ oriented extension to electronic mail is proposed as a protocol for facilitating distributed Computer Mediated Education applications. The use of electronic mail allows use of the Internet as a transport medium. A protocol has been devised for a loosely coupled, distributed, Computer Mediated Education system using electronic mail to transport course material (encapsulated as objects) from one workstation to another. Each workstation uses an object‐oriented environment with the ability to dynamically incorporate new courseware objects at run time. A prototype system has been developed to illustrate the feasibility of the protocol.