A few Words Regarding Technology

Implementation
Several programming languages have been used to implement the virtual laboratory of computer science: the Lisp dialect Scheme (for the lab tool), Java (for the tutorial components), PHP, JavaScript, and HTML (for controlling the tasks and presenting the feedback to the user). Background literature is presented as PDF or HTML documents.

Use
To work with the virtual laboratory the student has to log in at the University of Hagen via an Internet connection.
This is quite easy for students using UNIX or related systems (Linux, FreeBSD, &hellip) who have to connect to the university server by means of a ssh-login. Users of Windows^® must install an emulation program (Cygwin/ XFree86) to get a UNIX-like environment under Windows. It turned out to be very useful for practical work and is quite easy to install.

System requirements
To use the virtual system the following requirements must be met:

The monitor must have a resolution of 1024x768 pixels or more, or some components may not be shown.
System requirements for Windows^®-systems:
- The processor should have at least 400MHz.
- The installation of Cygwin/XFree86 needs at least 150MB free memory on a hard disk.

Internet
For communicational purposes the software uses an Internet connection, but neither the type of the connection nor the Internet service provider (ISP) is important.