Education at the Vienna University of Technology, Faculty of Electrical Engineering: Traditional Lecture Based Education versus Telematics Based Education

The theoretically oriented part of the education at the Vienna University of Technology, Faculty of Electrical and Electronical Engineering, is traditionally given by lectures and seminars. Now we intend to restructure the lecture system at ICT (Institute of Computer Technology) significantly, following special research results of modern learning theory. We expect organizational and educational advantages from our new Web based lecturing systems, e.g. better student lecturer interaction, personalized access to information combined with interactive simulation systems. The process of restructuring this part of the curriculum is presented by a description of the current situation, where traditional lecture based systems are complemented by some Hypertext lecture notes and laboratories for remote access, designed for students of our university only. Telematics based lectures and laboratories were started mainly to ease the situation of overcrowded lecture rooms and laboratories, where almost no communication between students and lecturers takes place. Future plans are going further, trying to establish distance education cooperations with other universities on national and international level using WWW and multimedia implementations to modernize knowledge presentation methods and information gathering processes.