This entry page contains the Notice Board , which holds messages from the EAP tutor and the Merlin system administrator. The tutor uses the Notice Board for administrative messages giving details of room changes, elections of student representatives, reminders of approaching assignment deadlines and so forth. Who area , which contains students' and tutors' homepages. Each homepage contains a photograph and resum of the personal and academic interests of the group member. These are intended to help students to identify other students on the EAP module who are studying the same discipline, but who could not be put in the same tutorial group because of timetable restraints.
Students can also see who else is online at the same time as themselves.
The Pathway is divided into eleven stages to match the eleven weeks of the module, and the tutor is able to control student access to each stage. For example, the screen in Appendix 2 was created in the sixth week of the module, and it can be seen that Stage 7 was not then available to students. This access control facility was useful since it was not possible to create the entire module content in the Merlin environment before the module started. The student is intended to follow the tasks in sequence, although there is no way for the tutor to ensure that this happens. Each task states its title and learning aim and gives some input.