Impact of World Wide Web, Java, and virtual environments on education in computational science and engineering

The World Wide Web (WWW) on the Internet has been recognized as an effective environment to create new distributed applications that have the potential to bring instruction beyond the bounds of the classroom. The availability of browsers (e.g. Mosaic, Netscape, Hot Java) has enormously simplified the access to the WWW, and there have been numerous initiatives to take advantage of this new technology for teaching. This work will illustrate recent developments of tools for engineering education and technology transfer which take advantage of WWW browsers, Java applets, and virtual reality. We have developed modules based on WWW browsers incorporating educational and research software, including advanced visualization, which find use for multimedia classroom presentations accessible by Internet users, and which can also improve interaction among academic groups and industry. Therefore, the material is suitable for asynchronous distance learning and technology transfer. Examples of interactive WWW applications include device simulation, semiconductor band structure calculation, numerical techniques, and electromagnetics