Telelearning via the Internet

This book provides a simple introduction to use of Internet technologies for teaching and learning. The target market appears to be teachers and administrators in community colleges and universities.

The nine chapters are divided into four sections: an introduction to Internet tools, reports on applications surveys, an introduction to the costs of applying Internet tools in education, and a discussion of security and other management issues.

Part I contains clear descriptions of many fundamental Internet services with educational applications. This section covers services based on e‐mail and the WWW, text‐based conferencing tools, audio‐conferencing tools, and video‐conferencing tools. The descriptions emphasise generic service types, supported by examples of free or low cost software. Proprietary systems are not discussed in any depth. The descriptions are clear and accurate, and newcomers to these technologies should find them useful.

The surveys are dated and weak, but some of the observations remind readers why we need to know about the Internet and online learning. Electronic mail and the WWW are now widely used in education. Degrees and other courses are now available from a range of providers, including traditional universities, wholly online educational institutions and independent online education providers.

Part III is headed “Economics of telelearning via the Internet”. This section, in fact, contains a simple list of “common elements in the cost structure of an Internet‐based telelearning system”, divided into institution‐related costs and student‐related costs. The list assumes distance learning. This section includes good simple explanations of different communication technologies: modem, ISDN, and ASDL, and their strengths and weaknesses. This discussion, supported by informative comparative tables, is one of the highlights of the book.

Informed information professionals will be disappointed with much of the final section. Only the discussion of security issues, with its good, clear technical descriptions of several available options for managing the security of education sites, is of much value here.

This book has a strong North American bias, but some comparative discussions of communication technologies may be useful to those working in countries with less well developed infrastructure. The paperback production is good, but there are annoying errors in several tables and figures.

The book’s strength lies in its clear and accessible descriptions of Internet technologies. Although some chapter and section headings suggest that it might be so, this book is not a guide to design or presentation of a course using online techniques, nor is it a guide to administrators who make decisions about investment in online learning. It would, however, be useful as a first manual of Internet technologies for educators.