Internet-based Adaptable Distance Learning System for Higher Education

为了适应信息时代社会多元化的需求，终身教育的重要性日益提高，高等教育也随之发生了变革。高等教育的一个重要特征是学生的背景知识、学习能力和学习目标与普通教育不同。此外，应该注意到，教育不是通过新技术的应用来实现的，因此，应该将新技术的概念形成、实践和评价作为教育的方向。此外，由于学生在高等教育的学习过程中具有自我评价能力，因此K- 12教育所需要的计算机评价型的教育支持功能并不是问题，重要的是充实的教育内容。本研究的重点是研究和开发一个实用的基于Internet的远程学习系统WebLS。WebLS是一个基于Web的异步远程教育系统，目前正在通用的WindowsOS环境下工作，并在全球范围内共享使用。教师无须具备任何资讯科技的专门知识，便可利用该系统的用户界面自行编制教材。除了生成一个新的内容转换从现有的内容，如Word文件，Power Point文件，视频文件，图像文件等，可以很容易地实现。另一方面，学生可以在通常的互联网浏览器环境中访问WebLS系统，并可以在世界任何地方按照自己的学习速度学习。由于内容本身是用XML表示的，所以它的兼容性很高。

In order to meet the demand of the diversified society in the information era, the importance of lifelong education has highly increased, which results in the evolution in the higher education. The important feature of higher education is that a student's background knowledge, capability of learning, and objectives of learning differ from those in lower education. Furthermore, it should be noted that education is not realizable by application of new technology, and therefore, should orient spirally concept formation, practice and evaluation. Moreover, since the student has the self-valuation capability in the process of learning in high education, a computerized-evaluation type of educational support function, which is required in K- 12 education, is not an issue, and substantial educational contents are important for it instead.In this research, the focus was applied on the research and development of a practical Internet-based distance learning system, WebLS. WebLS is a web-based asynchronous distance learning system and is working on the usual WindowsOS environment as a shared use world widely. Teachers can develop their own teaching materials without any special knowledge on IT using the end-user interface of the system. In addition to produce a new contents transforming from existing contents such as Word files, Power Point files, Video files, image files and so on, can be achieved very easily. On the other hand, students can access to the WebLS system in a usual Internet browser environment, and can learn at their own pace of learning anywhere in the world. Since the contents itself are expressed in XML, its compatibility is high.