One of the objectives of the course is to familiarise students with common crop problems. In the absence of live specimens, good quality photos are important. This could only be done in a limited way with the existing paper-based extramural course. Using computer technology seemed a cost-effective way of doing this. While innovative things can be done within paper-based study guides, computer technology makes this easier to manage.
Extramural study can be a lonely activity.
Extramural students could be given the chance to raise issues and debate them, as internal students would do in a tutorial setting. Features of the electronic course In 1999, the electronic course was launched and has been used from that time. It consists of two parts, a CD-ROM and several WWW resources. The course contains a total of 784 HTML pages including 777 images. A total of 757 person-hours were spent developing the course over two years.