Extending the Academic Year for Mature Part-Time Higher Education Students using a Web Based Learning Environment

Higher education institutions in the United Kingdom are subject to a variety of pressures to encourage a more inclusive and broader based student body. This has resulted in an extended range of flexible course delivery patterns for mature, part-time students. This paper discusses a pilot to extend the academic year for a small cohort of such students using a web based learning environment. The pilot used the web based learning environment BSCW (Basic Support for Cooperative Work) to deliver the course outside the traditional teaching period (in the summer vacation period). The paper firstly introduces the background to the pilot and details its aims. This is followed by a review of the pilot that was devised for evaluation purposes and an analysis of its implementation Finally, by way of summary, there are general comments on the pilot, on BSCW and specific comments on encouraging collaboration and site usage, on training, on lurking and on flaming.