Internet: An Innovative Environment for Information Dissemination, Access, and Retrieval in Distance Education

Abstract

Information sources available through the networks such as the Internet and Bitnet have proliferated and diversified in recent years. Nowadays, in addition to textual information, multimedia databases containing `documents' with graphics, images, sound and animation can often be found on the network. Government agencies, various institutions, commercial companies, and, more recently, individuals themselves, can disseminate information and open their own databases to the use of others who have access to the Internet services. End-users can easily get access to such information through the Internet, download it, and use it for their own purposes. Needless to say, availability of information through the Internet in various forms is having a profound impact upon how we work, educate and entertain. This paper provides a brief overview of the Internet. We summarize the types of information that can be found on the network, describe basic Internet services (e.g., electronic mail, remote login, file transfer protocol), and introduce some of the information discovery and retrieval tools such as the Internet Gopher, WAIS, and the World-Wide Web. We then go on to discuss the impact of the Internet on resource sharing, document delivery, electronic publishing, telecommunications, and education, More specifically, we discuss the impact of the Internet on distance education and investigate the ways by which distance education can benefit from this new information dissemination, access, and retrieval environment. We conclude by drawing attention to some of the issues with regards to using the Internet in distance education projects and make some recommendations.