The course is taught over a period of ten weeks by means of weekly two-hour seminars which include presentations by the course teachers and group discussion sessions. In addition, computing laboratory classes are held at appropriate times throughout the course. The conference ran during the fifth and sixth weeks of the course. By this stage of the course, the students had spent two weeks studying the topic of data protection, including issues of legal policy in the field of data protection, international developments in data protection, and the regulatory structure of data protection in the United Kingdom. In contrast to a traditional seminar which necessarily requires that all participants are present in the same place at the same time, a computer conference works by participants adding text messages to a computer file at times when it is convenient for them to do so.
All conferees are able to read the comments left by other conferees.
Conferencing software was originally developed by computer professionals to enable them to engage in debates and exchange ideas and information. It has been adapted to meet the needs of a variety of corporate and academic environments. However, one of the purposes of the current exercise was to discover whether computer conferencing could be used effectively in undergraduate legal education. Typically, this allows one user on the network to send a message to another user, or to a group of users. The messages are stored until such time as the recipients next use their machines, and then they are shown the message and given the option of replying.