Courses use tutor marked assignments and have examinations. Degrees such as BPhil and 

MEd are offered as well as a Certificate in Advanced Professional Studies. A few courses 

offer a statement of course completion. Specific examples include the European Computer 

Driving License and various NVQ qualifications. 

The cost of courses varies tremendously according to the nature of the accreditation and 

length of the course. On the whole, full student costs are not charged. 

The courses have fixed start and finish dates. 

University Departments or Centers 

A large number of the institutions were categorized as a university department or center. The 

entries in this category seem to be dominated by a range of creative projects and experiments 

to learn more about web based education. The projects seem to be more experimental than 

strategic. Among the institutions characterized as university departments or centers were 

Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio de Janeiro [18] and The Acadia University [20]. 

Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio de Janeiro [18] (

http://www.maxwell.lambda.ele.puc 

rio.br/

) is a Brazilian university with 110 students and 6 courses in electrical engineering. The 

Maxwell project is under development by the Electrical Engineering Department. The site has 

been used as a support to regular undergraduate and graduate courses which are taught on 

campus. External users have access to the site. Next semester the number of courses is 

expected to be 12 and the number of students to be over 200. 

The Acadia University [20] (

http://webster.acadiau.ca/conted/courses

) in Canada offers 2 

courses in astronomy. The primary resources for both courses are textbooks. For some parts of 

the courses an  observing handbook  will be required. A shareware  sky program  (available by 

ftp on the Internet) will be used for planning observation session and for simulating the sky 

configuration of planets and comets. Links will be made to web resources which provide 

recent information and images. Students questions and assignments will be dealt with through 

e mail, and a newsgroup for each course is available for discussion between students and the 

instructor. A special web page will be maintained for course information and Internet links to 

interesting current happenings. 

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