All of our courses require familiarity with standard computer operations (e.g. browsing, email attachments, cut & paste, etc). Broadband internet access (e.g. cable, DSL, or better) is required; online lessons operate poorly on slow connections.

The great majority of our web-based courses require the Flash plugin and should run on most computers (but not the iPad). Many courses also use Java applets. A handful of courses have Windows-only components; please see our Macintosh info page. Course documents are usually in PDF format.

More specific hardware and software requirements are detailed under the heading "System Requirements" at the bottom of each of our course description pages; please refer to them before applying.

Note for international students: most of our courses require the US-English character set.

Email Account

• Students in our distance courses must be able to communicate with their instructor via email.
• Frequent changing of student screen name or email address is inversely proportional to success. If your email address changes during the course, contact your instructor and the registrar right away.
• Filtering software (such as parental controls or spam blockers) must allow connections with jhu.edu and other domains as specified by the course.

If you use Microsoft Windows...

In addition to Microsoft Automatic Updates, we recommend that you install one program from each of the following categories, update them at least monthly, and run them at least weekly:

1. Anti-virus, such as AntiVir, Avast or AVG
2. Anti-spyware, such as MalwareBytes, Spybot or Windows Defender

If your PC has internet security software (such as Zone Alarm), you may need to reconfigure it to allow our courses. Some of our students have encountered incompatibilities with such programs (particularly Norton or McAfee "suites" that monitor your Internet connection). Security software must not block access to jhu.edu, ctyjhu.org, and other domains as specified by the course.

Descartes Cove

The Descartes Cove CDs are designed to run on Windows 98 or higher, and Mac OS up to 10.6 (Rosetta/Carbon app).

General Technical Support

If you have technical problems of any sort, please contact your instructor and fill out the Tech Support Request Form.