PRESENTING AN ONLINE GRADUATE COMPUTER SCIENCE PROGRAM AT LOW COST USING OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE

There is widespread and growing interest in distance education, conducted over the Internet. The authors have conducted courses online for several years in a mode called simulteaching, where the instructor presents to a group of students in the classroom simultaneously with another group online. Since 2002 they have been doing this in an expanding program in Computer Science and Information Technology that uses a system consisting of open source software components. This system, developed by Pullen, is called Network EducationWare (NEW). Whereas traditional synchronous online teaching can be complex and costly, the combination of simulteaching and the NEW software results in a system that is well accepted by students and faculty and also costs very little to operate. This paper describes the style of teaching, the open source software it uses, and the initial student outcomes that have been measured. 1