With the recent rapid advances in information technologies, educational rese

With the recent rapid advances in information technologies, educational researchers at every level and in every discipline have developed new methods, took, and environments for instruction. Their general purpose is to make the educational process —teaching and learning sound much more scientific and modern. As the Internet, email and multimedia have already become parts of most college students’ lives and studies nowadays; applying these new information technologies to engineering and science instruction is a great challenge for teachers and researchers. Although the effectiveness and impact of new information technologies on education are not yet well comprehended and documented, the promises and visions they hold for improving education are exciting. For example, computer mediated networks provide distance education with a new medium for bringing teachers, students and learning materials in different locations together. By the networks, teaching and learning are no longer confined to the classrooms.
    Students at home and in work places can have access to learning material at any time, which makes their studying process become easier and more convenient. Individual students can communicate with their teachers and talk without the relative nervousness of having to meet at specific places and times.
    Students can work on learning materials at their own pace and discuss them with other people when they have questions. In other words, they can learn individually but not alone; they are physically separated but study together through computer networks.