Systems support for virtualizing traditional courses in science and engineering

Current Internet technology allows traditional campus-based universities to enter the business of distance education. However, they begin to realise not only that the production of rich-media contents for web-based distance courses is extremely expensive, but that offering distance learning also implies that they have to establish new services completely different from their traditional way of teaching. In this paper we argue that the production of e-lectures by presentation recording and the use of e-lectures as the core of web courses may be a possible way out of this trap. We discuss technical requirements influencing the quality of producing and using e-lectures for distance learning.