Multimedia education, distance learning and electronic commerce applications

Beginning with a description of an actual teaching and learning situation at a university the article deals with a possible further evolution of university education. The motivation is a discussion of how to integrate new technologies like the Internet and multimedia in university education. Therefore the second part of the article reviews the question what happens when these technologies are simply applied to an university education system. These reflections lead to a second framework of an "electronic lecture". Because of imperative additions to this application scenario the resulting framework of a "virtual lecture" extremely differs from the first approach. The last step reviewed is the export and import of educational units to and from other universities or companies. The extension of the second framework to a "virtual university" is more a conclusion than a real extension. Adding some new centralized services and institutions like a payment service and an "education broker" will lead to an electronic commerce framework for education. The article concludes with some statements about the influence of information technology to university education and the way of learning. A further conclusion is a possible use of the last framework as a classification scheme for educational multimedia applications. This application could lead to an efficiency evaluation or design of such systems.