Teaching over the Internet: the future

The Internet is perceived as a mechanism that is capable of revolutionising education because it enables learners to access huge amounts of information and allows information providers to publish with ease ever increasing amounts of information. But this is a very limited view of education, so this article reviews the essential features of the educational process and examines the extent to which the Internet can support them. It is nevertheless true that the Internet has the potential to provide a highly supportive learning environment, albeit of a very specific nature: distance education. However, to realise these benefits will require more research and development and we look at some of the current attempts to put an appropriate infrastructure in place. It seems that the future for Internet teaching is bright, but much is still to be learned and the technology needs to be improved if the full potential is to be realised.