3/52.5.2 Online education in the Traditional Classroom
Online education does not necessarily have to replace the traditional classroom, like when applied in distance education, but can, on the other hand, be an additional feature [Hil95]. Students can use computers to write and hand in their assignments, or for group discussions about the course material. Even during a traditional face-to-face class CMC can be used in the same manner as for meeting support in CSCW. In the lecture theatre of the future [Len97] students might use their own portable personal computers which can be connected to the local network by plugging them into sockets in the lecture theatre. They get the course material onto their screens and can communicate with their teacher using their computer, especially to give anonymous feedback about pace and level of difficulty. For this thesis I have implemented a Java-Applet to provide some of these feedback features. The Applet will be discussed in detail in the last chapter.