2000 Surpassing Online Learning Obstacles Dilermando Piva Jr. Faculty of Technology of Indaiatuba, Brazil Ricardo Luís de Freitas Catholic University of Campinas, Brazil Gilberto S. Nakamiti Catholic University of Campinas, Brazil Copyright © 2009, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. IntroductIon In the last decade, the use of Internet and wide-band access have supported the spread of distance learning through the Web, which we will call Online Teach- ing. Schools and universities have been rethinking their teaching practices and educational policies in establishing online teaching programs. Online Teach- ing becomes not only a new pedagogical model or an educational technology, but also a new social model and technology, gathering each time more students at decreasing costs. Nevertheless, Online Teaching is far from achiev- ing its maximum potential. Personal, methodological, technological, and institutional restrictions are usually associated with important limitations. As an example, teachers may not attend many students without affecting the quality of the online learning process. Clearly, this may impose serious restrictions to a major growth of the number of students attended and/or the quality of the learning process. This work presents a computational tool, called AUXILIAR, designed to aid the teacher in managing the classes, to monitor courses, and to conduct and redirect the students learning process in online courses. The system shall decrease the teachers’ time and ef- fort in managing the classes and the students learning process, measuring the students learning levels to as- sure the teaching quality. The system AUXILIAR is composed of two modules. The frst one contains an edition, diagramming, and publication tool for online courses, called CONSTRUCTOR. The second one, called REASONING, manages the path followed by each student when exploring the courses contents. It is also responsible to automatically detect and redirect the student, depending on his/her defciencies, detected by the followed path and by formative evaluations. To achieve this, it uses a Case-Based System, which stores, adapts and reuses previous experiences to new situations. Background Among the studies that relate obstacles to the effective use and spread of technology in online courses, we could include Pajo and Wallace (2001) that pointed as the main restrictions: 1) the time required to learn how to use the technology; 2) the time required to develop and to implement web-based courses; and 3) the time required to use the Online Teaching environ- ment, and to monitor the course, e.g. giving feedback to the students. As a similar perspective, James and Beattie (1996) indicated the main obstacles to be: 1) the time required for the management of the class and the students; 2) the time required to produce good quality teaching materials; and 3) the comparative reward in teaching at distance when compared to traditional teaching. Similar results are also present in (Daugherty & Funke, 1998; Metcalf, 1997; Hare & McCartan, 1996; Piva Jr et al, 2002), among others. The minimization of such obstacles when using computational tools becomes of major concern. More- over, methodological strategies that could be integrated into computational tools focusing on a more effcient management of the teaching-learning process, thereby minimizing the needed effort of the teacher/mediator without worsening the learning levels, would also be highly desirable.