HyperCourseware created − 1 January, 1990
Submitted by: Jill Mohler
Introduction:
In the early Nineties, the explosive growth of the Internet changed the essential character of delivering educational content to remote students. The Internet is opened to the public and the use of email becomes common communication among students and instructors. The Internet starts to become the medium of choice for educators over video and television because it provides all the elements vital for distance learning:
- On-demand delivery of video, audio, text, and graphics.
- Immediate online access to vast libraries of research materials.
- Real-time or near-real-time interaction among instructors and students.
Because there was so much growth during the early Nineties, I have highlighted some important milestones in each individual year.
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HyperCourseware created by Kent Norman at the University of Maryland, College Park was originally written for use in the At&T Teaching Theater, a prototype electronic classroom. The original version was written in WinPlus, a Hypercard like program, and ran on a local area network with one server and numerous client workstations. It included an online syllabus, online lecture notes and readings, synchronous chat rooms, asynchronous discussion boards, online student profiles with pictures, online assignments and exams, online grading, and a dynamic seating chart. A Web-based version was introduced in January, 1996, which has continued to function up to the present at cognitron.umd.edu.
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Other Steps In Technology:
- The World Wide Web (WWW) prototype is created at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics. The lab is also known as CERN, or Conseil European Pour La Recherche Nucleaire. Tim Berners-Lee writes the original program. WWW merges the techniques of networked information and hypertext.
- The National Science Foundation begins allowing commercial use of its NSFNET computer network.
- The Windows 3.0 operating system is released by Microsoft.
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Other Steps In Virtual Learning Environments:
- The Athena Project at MIT, which started in 1983, has evolved into a system of "shared services" that look remarkably like many current VLEs or learning management systems. The network hosted software from multiple vendors, and made it all work together. Here is a list of the features of the system as of 1990: printing, electronic mail, electronic messaging (Zephyr), bulletin board conferencing (Discuss), on-line consulting (OLC), on-line teaching assistant (OLTA), on-line help (OLI-I), assignment exchange (Turn in/pick up), access to system libraries, authentication for system security (Kerberos), naming-for linking system components together (Hcsiod), and a service management system (Moira).
- Pavel Curtis created LambdaMOO, an early Multi-User Dungeon (MUD), at Xerox PARC.
- FirstClass is launched by SoftArc, initially for the Macintosh platform. See the history of FirstClass for the chronology of its development over the next 12 years.
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Sources:
Freed, Ken (1998). A History of Distance Learning: Interactive Distance Learning. Retrieved January 26, 2007, from Media Vision Web site: http://www.media-visions.com/ed-distlrn3.html
Shedden, David (2004, Dec.). New Media Timeline (1990). Poynteronline Web Site, Retrieved Jan 26, 2007, from http://poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=75953&sid=26
History of virtual learning environments. Retrieved January 26, 2007, from Wikipedia Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_virtual_learning_environments
Comments:
DistEd (June 6, 2007. 01:18pm)
Submitted by: Kimberly Sieg
1990 – 1991- Merit, IBM and MCI formed a non profit corporation called ANS, Advanced Network & Services, which was to conduct research into high speed networking. National Science Foundation quickly adopted the new network and by the end of 1991 all of its sites were connected system. During this time, the Department of Defense disbanded the ARPANET and it was replaced by the NSFNET backbone. Tim Berners- Lee and CERN in Geneva implement a hypertext system to provide efficient information access to the members of the international high-energy physics community. This was the beginning of the World Wide Web (WWW). (Open).
References
Open site “Free Internet Encyclopedia.” Retrieved May 26, 2007, from http://open-site.org/Computers/Internet/History/