This is a real advantage of such a system, the possibility of this kind of dialogue taking place with a student despite the larger numbers they are having to cope with. He was not worried about the amount of his time this would take, it would be quicker for the student than finding him. He felt that these advantages have not yet been realised but they are very clear. There were also problems because one of the lecturers was not connected to the network for the first half of the semester which obviously limited the progress of the use of on-line discussions. Students learnt from each other, and he regularly observed them going off in a group to work, the results of this could be seen in the discussion group.
Some courses have very large numbers of students.
This will inevitably represent a change in practice. Some courses may have more elaborate materials such as historical documents and manuscripts. There is a specific course in Women's Writing which it is intended to offer in Distance Learning mode as part of the interdisciplinary Women's Studies degree. She had no previous experience of using the WWW, and little of using Windows before undertaking the teaching of his course and felt she was a 'reluctant recruit', but Lecturer 1 was keen to explore offering the course in this way. It was appropriate as it was a new course anyway, and not at the 'heartland of the English Department'.