How do online courses work ?

[Rishy]

Not sure if this is in the right section..

I need some help/guidance/pointers etc on how, from a hardware aspect, do online courses work ?

Like...do i need a server ? if yes, then what...i create a website thats on the server and then people access the courses straight off the site ? So the server would be connected to an ISP 24/7 ?

Or what.. ?

Any help is appreaciated...

 

[ilkka]

Depends on what you want to do.

If a simple website suffices, then any old webhost would do. The webspace you get for free from your ISP, university, etc. might be sufficient. If you are looking for something more complicated than just HTML pages and e-mail forms, then you need a webhost that allows fancier scripts. If you want streaming video lectures and that sort of stuff, then you'll need a lot more bandwidth.

And of course on who you are. If you are a university, you probably have lots of good webservers already, and putting the online course onto one of these would be the obvious choice, almost regardless of your needs. But if you are starting your own home business, then buying your own server probably wouldn't make sense. An ISP connection alone which allows for a server is more expensive than third-party hosts.