Tele-training: Open Issues and Current Technology

Recently, tele-training has become a hot topic of research within the computer science research community. The computer industry is also interested in tele-training solutions. Distance education is seen by the computer industry as a new growing market and recently we witnessed a proliferation of the first generation of tele-training software packages. The extend to which tele-training systems meet users' expectations and whether tele-training services substantially improve our education systems is a controversial debate. In this paper we describe a number of important issues that, in our opinion, will have an important impact on integrating and adopting tele-training solutions in current and future pedagogical approaches. We classify existing tele-training services into two main categories, synchronous and asynchronous services, and we present a few systems, either freeware or commercial products, implementing services in each category.