Frame-buffer on Demand: Applications of Stateless Client Systems in Web-based Learning

The growth of the Internet and the World Wide Web has changed the way people are educated, and distance learning is amongst the most promising fields of new Web applications built from existing services with supporting infrastructures. In this paper, we introduce a number of new applications built from Stateless Client Systems to assist the learning of computer-based activities. Stateless Client Systems separate the display interface from the application logic in windowing systems. They embed a client/server architecture, where the server executes all the applications and the client simply presents the frame buffers or screen images to the user and accepts user input. We seamlessly introduce a proxy server into the client/server architecture and create tools that enable teachers and students to record, replay, operate and share computer-based work sessions. The concepts and the systems for distance learning can be easily extended to generic collaborative work.