There are facilities for tutors to put in their own material, knowledge or questions, and they can get reports on students. Future plans are to make the system more flexible, so that the tutor can do task analysis and decide on tutorial help. A database and reporting system will also be devised to analyse student progress and produce reports. The Sunderland team is using the same methodology to develop a project to improve the vocabulary skills of hearing-impaired school leavers. Students must spend a timetabled period in a staffed computer lab and undertake tasks defined on lab sheets written by lecturers on the mainstream course.
Some work is undertaken offscreen and the results entered.
These exercises are not assessed but the students must show they have made some attempt to complete the task. It is hoped that this experience will encourage students to use the lab throughout their undergraduate programme. The project makes use of software from various sources, and is machine independent. Chris Haines would be happy to talk about exchanging material. 3.2 Discrete Maths at Brunel Andrew Rae outlined how Discrete Mathematics is being taught through self-paced learning.