with chat rooms, discussion boards and listervs. Course notes are provided online in a variety 

of formats including html and pdf. Many units contain media enhancements such as video, 

animation and sound. Access to other academic resources such as library and study skills 

support are provided. Administrative services such as enrolment, timetables and access to 

personal records of progress are also available. 

The web is used for presentation, communication, administration, and teaching, but to 

differing degrees for the different courses. Administrative use includes enrolment and students 

contacting the administration to find out their examination results. 

The web is used together with other media. This could range from the web plus lecturing on 

campus to the web plus CD ROM plus you name it for distance education. The web is used 

predominantly for content and for interaction between people. The student has a web page and 

initiates the CD ROM and or video clip through it. Basically ours is a home grown system 

because we began teaching on the internet in 1992 and there was nothing available. We added 

Graphical User Interfaces in 1995. Our system is UNIX based and we use various bits of 

public domain software available on the internet. We have looked at the commercially 

available kernels but do not believe that they are better than our system. We do not believe 

that a system the size of ours, or what ours will shortly be, can be comfortably accommodated 

on a commercial kernel. Some of our academics use WebCT or Top Class for their own 

courses and we will provide student links to these, but the university Virtual Campus will 

remain our own development. 

Communication is primarily e mail and bulletin boards with some web involvement providing 

each student with e mail to the tutor and to other students. It provides the distance education 

students, who may be 1000 km away from each other, to communicate with each other and 

provides peer support. 

The system is based on tutors not machines. Students may submit electronically but there is no 

electronic marking or return of corrected assignments. No official examinations are on the 

web. The 20 year history of our distance education provision continues: students go to 

schools, libraries, colleges etc to do their examinations. 

Accreditation is provided through degrees, diplomas, certificates, and statements of 

completion. Many full degrees are offered with web dimensions. Only 4 courses are available 

totally on the web, except for the examinations. Every course is available traditionally, some 

are available online. some materials of other courses are available online. There are issues 

here of equity and of academic culture. Students can work online but tutors prefer to print out 

the assignments and post them back to the students. some students have computers at home 

and we can make the assumption that they can get on the net. 

The prices are exactly the same as for traditional face to face courses. They are moving 

towards flexible start and flexible finish, but they have a lot of students from many Asian 

countries and need to proceed prudently. 

The web is being used and will be used very widely for teaching in Australia. They run 

external courses both at a distance and on the web in which students never come to Western 

Australia, let alone to the university. People move a lot nowadays and the norm will be that 

they are able to study for their degrees anytime, anywhere. 

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