CHAPTER 7 Going Online: The Net, Information Services, and More
New Alternatives To Achieve Higher Education
Except for occasional innovations in the use of technology in the classroom, the manner in which higher education is delivered is relatively unchanged since the founding of the University of Paris centuries ago. However, since the mid-1990s, higher education has begun a revolution that is changing the way professors, administrators, and students think about teaching and learning. Many feel we are in transition to a new era and if you look at the 3700 plus institutions in the United States and what they are doing, they may be right. The explosion of technology has opened new doors for higher education. Currently, higher education can be viewed as four models. There is the traditional model that includes on-campus classrooms with teachers. The second model is the corporate university with on-site training programs developed by individual companies for employees. The third model is of the large university or university consortium that relies on technology to jump national and cultural boundaries. The fourth model is entirely virtual, where students and teachers communicate (teach and learn) online. The Internet continues to redefine how we live and learn. In the near future it is expected that all of these models will remain in place; however, some will inevitably grow at the expense of the others.
Spam Is Effective
Spam continues to demonstrate that it can be more effective than any other form of advertisements. A recent survey by Ernst & Young found that fourteen percent of the people who who receive unsolicited e-mail will visit the suggested web site, plus, most will do so within 48 hours. Moreover, users presented with an unsolicited e-mail will visit the site three to 10 times more often than they would when presented with a banner ad.
XHTML Now the Standard
Standard Over the last decade billions of Web pages have been created with HTML, the hypertext markup language. Recently, the World Wide Web Consortium announced the XHTML 1.0 specification as a W3C recommendation. Effectively, this retires the now somewhat limited HTML. Although it is currently the official standard, it will take a while for XHTML to be accepted and used by developers.