By far the greatest part of education materials currently available on the web is categorized in higher education as materials for further study.   According to an unofficial Commission definition, materials for further study can be monographs, scientific monographs, essays, problem texts or technical books. Materials for further study cover only a part of the subject matter, and their use does not require the approval of the Commission.

 

It is literature which the professor recommends to the students as additional study materials based on his own decision.

 

A completely new category that appeared on the web is professor's notes. They can be found on the web most often in the form of PowerPoint presentations, although they also appear in other formats such as PDF. These notes are, of course, a valuable source for the students through which they get a glimpse at the teacher's view on the subject.

 

The next very popular category is virtual laboratory. In virtual laboratories students can conduct experiments and computer simulations. With certain types of experiments which are conducted on the computer, students hardly notice the difference compared to real experimental work. It is more and more common to find original experimental data available on the web.

 

But the most popular materials available on the web in large numbers are different reference books, dictionaries and encyclopaedias. This group contains some very valuable materials from distinguished and authoritative sources. In most cases their content cannot be directly linked to only one higher education subject, so these are not higher education textbooks in the classical sense.