COSTE: open environment for teaching in computer science area

In this paper we introduce a generic teleeducation system, referred to as COSTE (computer science teleeducation environment), to cover the distance between teaching staff and students. COSTE is an open environment which adds to the usual online courses, flexibility to define and follow them, student training with practical components, queries to the teacher, semiautomatic assessment and an automatic validation mechanism. COSTE has a client-server architecture, where the communication scheme uses the HTTP protocol with WWW browsers as clients. The current implementation efforts are directed toward the operating systems teaching. In this field, we provide practical units for training in CPU scheduling disciplines, virtual memory management and concurrent systems programming. In this paper we also review the results of teleeducation experiences with COSTE.