Computer Science Courses Offered Via the Internet

This coming year, the Extension School is expanding its distance education program using the Internet to deliver course lectures with video, audio, and multimedia. Based upon the success of a pilot program last fall, the Extension School will now offer five leading-edge computer science courses over the Internet.

Weekly lectures from the courses will be recorded and made available to students anywhere in the world using new "streaming video" technology. The lectures can be seen on demand using an Internet Web browser. Additional multimedia and Internet Web technologies will be used to interact with the instructor and teaching assistants, as well as allow students to work on exams, class projects, and homework assignments.

A Web site which includes additional information on the course and abbreviated lectures with video and related multimedia material to demonstrate the technology is available at: http://www.dce.harvard.edu/extension/1998-99/courses/distance.html

Extending course offerings to the Internet means that students who are unable to come to Harvard but who have access to the World Wide Web can enroll in certain Harvard Extension School classes. The five courses that will be offered this year are: CSCI E-13 (Web Programming in Perl), CSCI E-131b (Communication Protocols and Internet Architectures), CSCI E-132 (Advanced Topics in Data Networking Protocols and Network Architectures), CSCI E-207 (Theory of Computation and its Applications), and CSCI E-215 (UNIX Systems Programming). In industries where information technologies are widely deployed, continuing education is critical for success and the advantages of taking such courses from Harvard are significant.

Michael Shinagel, Dean of the Division of Continuing Education, said, "Based upon our recent experiences, the Internet has proved to be a viable approach to distance education. While we will continue to refine the way we use this technology, we can now offer a larger community of students access to the quality learning experience available at the Harvard University Extension School."

CSCI E-131b was the pilot course that was available over the Internet last year and is being offered again this fall. Len Evenchik, the instructor of the course said, "The ability of students to learn the material and participate in all aspects of the course via the Internet last year was remarkable. The design and implementation of the Internet has been a major part of my lectures for many years and it is great that this same technology now makes my course more widely available."

For more information on the Extension School, call 496-5000, or visit the Web site at http://extension.dce.harvard.edu.