Providing Self-Study Resources for Computer Science Students: Five Years of the BURKS Project

John English, Faculty of IT, University of Brighton, Brighton BN2 4GJ, UK. je@brighton.ac.uk

Keywords

BURKS, CD-ROM, educational software

Abstract

This paper describes BURKS, a non-profit collection of useful resources for Computer Science students on CD-ROM which was originally developed by the author during the summer of 1996 and is now in its fifth edition. BURKS is a self-contained website spread across multiple CD-ROMs which includes an integrated web browser and about 2 gigabytes of software and documentation covering a wide range of Computer Science topics. For the benefit of novices, it also uses helper applications to provide automated installation of software from the CD to the user’s machine. In keeping with the non-profit nature of the project, the contents of the CDs are also available online at http://burks.brighton.ac.uk/. The paper discusses the rationale for the project, the techniques used to implement a single website on multiple CDs, and other issues involved in providing web-based material for offline use by students with little or no network connectivity.