A Protocol for computer mediated education across the internet

Changes in the workplace have had an impact on methods of training and education. There is a growing need for flexible methods of course delivery. The economics of courseware development highlight a need for more efficient use of courseware, pointing to geographically distributed Computer Mediated Education as a cost-effective way of sharing these development costs.
Object-orientation is a software development paradigm that is making sweeping changes to the information technology industry. An object- oriented extension to electronic mail is proposed as a protocol for facilitating distributed Computer Mediated Education applications. The use of electronic mail allows use of the Internet as a transport medium. A protocol has been devised for a loosely coupled, distributed, Computer Mediated Education system using electronic mail to transport course material (encapsulated as objects) from one workstation to another. Each workstation uses an object-oriented environment with the ability to dynamically incorporate new courseware objects at run time. A prototype system has been developed to illustrate the feasibility of the protocol.