Electronic Learning and Teaching Commerce Via Education Servers in Germany

THE ACTUAL TREND OF VIRTUAL LEARNING AND TEACHING With the increasing spreading of new media and communication technologies such as InternetlWorldWideWeb (the 'Web') also the electronic market for 'virtual learning and teaching' becomes a vital part of the commercial side of the Web. The reason therefore is that learning and teaching, and with it related administration and care processes can be supported by using the Web in so far as they become independent of time and place, i.e. they become virtual. In addition to that, the animation potentials of new media technologies can be used to enrich, stimulate, and reshape learning and teaching (following Winand 1997). Furthermore allows the active use of Web-based learning and teaching technologies to enhance the so-called 'media competencies' which become increasingly important for employees, and society as a whole. That is, new capabilities are needed in order to deal with, e.g. video conferences, interactive business television, chatting, distributed document processing, teleprocessing with banks or travel agencies, and navigating in virtual worlds on the Web and increasingly also on Intranets. Competencies to develop these new media technologies and applications, and especially competencies to use them are heavily requested which can only be acquired satisfactory by actively dealiig with these new technologies, in the end (see Heller, von Kortzfleisch and Winand 1998).