A virtual teaching and learning Environment

Abstract

We may say the knowledge is the new global asset – so people have to be continually learning, crafting innovative solutions to changing circumstances, staying informed and responsive. Computer Based Learning (CBL) provides perhaps the best opportunity for person self-guided learning. If we take into consideration the role played by the Internet in everybody’s life nowadays and if we make a further step forward to a CBL process using the Internet, we reach a more powerful variant of CBL: Computer On-line Learning (COL). Keeping in mind these two important needs we can easily see that general and efficient organization of multimedia (MM) information is one of the main requirements for developing courseware, which can be accesed by anyone’s computer quickly and smoothly. MM DataBase Management Systems (MM DBMSs) offer a good solution for this problem. They allow storing and manipulating such data in an efficient manner with a high level of generalizability. Vast digital libraries of information will soon be available on the Internet as a result of emerging technologies for manipulating MM. These libraries will profoundly impact the educational activities. A new virtual teaching and learning environment is evolving.