A three credit course should translate to about three hours of connection time. This is not relevant because MerLIN students can use a software package called an 'offline mail reader'. This allows the user to get on the system download all messages for the week and get off the system in less than a minute. They can read their mail and reply to questions and comments off-line without being connected to our system. When they are done, they dial up the system and upload their work.
MerLIN replaces contact hours with the benchmarking of our message log.
In a sixteen week course, each student must leave five substantial e-mail messages per week. At least 4 of these messages must be learner to learner replies to promote collaborative learning and peer tutoring. In a class of 20 students this would produce at least 100 messages in week. The average message is 20 lines long and takes 2 minutes to read, yielding about 200 minutes of reading per week. In addition it takes 7 minutes to compose and produce an e-mail message.