- Posted by maedstudent on April 27, 2008
Technical requirements in an online environment
Most online classes that I have reviewed pretty much use the same, or a similar format.
Most of the schools have both a web based way to attend class, or a software based way to attend class. In this posting I will discuss both. One school I have attended uses both formats and has been doing online classes for the last ten or so years. This school uses Microsoft outlook express for the newsgroup classroom environment.
So basically, users have to have a computer with the minimum specs of Windows 98 or above, and a DSL or Cable type connection. Believe me when I say as a former tech support rep with this said University a lot of customers do not have high-speed internet and expect to do online classes. Really I must beg of you not to make that mistake. The main reason I say this is because it is not fair to your other classmates that you as a team member are delaying your postings because you can’t or won’t get high-speed Internet. Again, online schooling is great, but please do me a favor and if you do not have high speed internet do not attend classes online please. Now, back to the format of the class, Outlook Express allows users to use HTML or plain text to write posting and this allows users to put personality and flair in the postings that are sent to the classrooms.
For those that have access to the Internet but are not at their home computer can access the same classroom via a web-based Microsoft exchange server. The format is very similar to that of the software based except that the user really can’t do anything fancy with the postings. Also, I have not forgotten about MAC users. The school profiled here does have a MAC compatible software. Besides, most newer MACS have boot camp which allows users to boot using Windows XP if needed, and also most programs these days are cross compatible from Windows to MAC.