Education of engineering students within a multimedia/Hypermedia environment—a review

This paper summarizes the activities of the Darmstadt University Department of Computer Integrated Design (Germany) related to: (1) distributed lectures (i.e., lectures distributed online through computer networks), including equipment used and ensuring sound and video quality; (2) lectures on demand, including providing access through the World Wide Web (WWW) and technology used for recording and digitizing the lecture; (3) hypermedia information environments, focusing on development of materials for a university course on Computer-Aided-Design (CAD); and (4) multimedia tutoring systems. Five figures illustrate: the multimedia and remote lecture room and individual workstations; overview of a lecture structured into sequences; the sequence of a lecture played in the WWW-Browser by a Java applet; the CAD manual in HTML with orientation and navigation structure, and the derived printed manual page; and the Java-player running a demonstration of how to use the CAD software for the derivation of drawings. (DLS