Purdue-On-Line: A Facility and Distributed Learning Framework to Develop and Deliver Internet based Education

We have started a distributed learning research and development effort to design technology solutions and methods which support collaborative learning any time and any place. This project is referred throughout as Purdue-On-Line (POL) The main research goal is to develop and integrate telelearning technologies with supporting services needed to enable existing courses, to design and deliver "on-line courses" and to meet the growing demand for distance education. Our first target areas include a) freshman education and specifically courses that involve large number of students currently taught in a lecture-recitation mode and b) professional programs in software engineering, computational finance, and veterinary medicine. Following we summarize the goals, activities, and challenges of the POL project.