Another thing about that from a mid period that caused a change there is that I used to be a liberal, and I am now a fascist! I used to let anybody on the course. I used to let almost anybody on the course who was on the Masters degree, and I used to let people sit in and watch, who weren't taking part in the course. I would say to them "You must enter into the activities" but I just left it at that. I now actually interview everybody that wants to do the course and say "This demands a great deal of work out of you. It is not as easy as a face-to-face course where you can go to sleep at the back". And I don't let anybody do the course who isn't paying for it and who isn't doing the exam - well, it's coursework. It could withdraw energy from a group if somebody was sitting there saying "Oh, I don't need this, and I've got to do my dissertation. I'm dashing off to do my dissertation - I'll be back in a month". And they'd got involved in a group, and they were doing something and they needed an extra person to read another paper, or do a bit of analysis here, and that person was just disappearing.

[Lecturer]

I've put more stress in recent years on pointing out to people that it's collaborative. In the early years - I can't remember how long it is now since we started it, say seven years - people were coming in and they were seeing it as being very new, and they were keen to get stuck in, and to collaborate and to talk to one another. Increasingly now, and this year more extremely than any - although this lot are actually, you know, quite an active lot. There are two or three people within the course who seem to want it to be like any other course. The thing has become less unusual, and they seem to want to turn up really and be told what to do. You have to chivvy them along; to say it's necessary for you to contribute. The teacher's not going to do anything. Seven or eight years ago that wouldn't have been necessary to say. Although you might have imagined that it was more necessary in the past than now. But people were coming in then, seeing it as being new and expecting to have to contribute. What's happening, it's the audience that's changing and the kind of expectations are changing. And the particular audience that we get for our degree is changing, because of the changing impact of IT on education it moves on quite quickly. It's not a big problem, but it is now something that one does have to flag a lot more carefully at the beginning.

[Lecturer]

Don't insist, but make a sort of rough guideline they should be logging in every other day. Maybe three days, if it's Friday to Monday and they are away. And that they should be seen to contributing, but don't put any numbers on it. We may crack a whip in terms of saying, like any other MA course, that you have to "attend" but we are not going to turn that attendance into a specific set of features. And try to talk also about what is the genre we're talking about here. Some of them sometimes say - I mean this is the big difficulty, particularly with foreign students, and changes all the time again - "I didn't have anything to say, so I didn't say anything". To which my response is "That wouldn't work if you were at a dinner party. What makes you imagine you're not at a dinner party?" "What is the image you have of what you are doing here? Sometimes it's necessary in CMC just to say something trivial so that the person knows they're being heard, otherwise the other student - even if you've got nothing to add - it can be important to say something. On the other hand if there is a million people saying something, it can be important to shut up so that people can hear one another. So it's subtle. You've got to kind of introduce a number of different things as you go along in a sense, and don't give it all at the beginning.

[Lecturer]

I've found that, I mean, while doing one of the tasks (lecturer) sent me an email saying that I wasn't participating enough, and that was quite a big issue because it made me feel, quite angry actually, because I had been reading a lot of the messages but I didn't feel particularly interested in some of the things that were being said, and it wasn't something really that I felt I had much to offer. Then it was like "Well, you have to participate and we have to do something about this". It actually stimulated me to look at, and one of the things I want to write for my essay, is about participation, and the kind of dynamics, if you like.

[Student]

We have a lot of lessons where people sit and don't say anything, and they don't get emails winging their way over to them saying "Oi! You're not participating". Because the email that I got, and other people got, said "Do you realise that there are criteria, as part of someone doing this course, that you must talk first?" You know, it's quite a big - waving a big stick. I mean, someone can sit in a lecture for three hours and say nothing, and someone can read email messages, and that's not being considered as participation. And that was the debate we had. And clearly there is no reason why you can say that in one situation that person is participating by just sitting in the room.

[Student]

Because I saw the other people sending messages and messages and messages I felt that you must show that you are there. You must show that you are leaving a message, so I sent something. I had received the same message as (student) about our low participation, so it was obvious that we had to collaborate. Even if we didn't like it or we didn't find it worth while.

[Student]

(The teacher is being asked if, and how, these online activities are assessed.) They're not. This is one of the things the students sometimes complain about. The assessment is by coursework. I mean, they are and they're not. The assessment is by coursework of four to five thousand words, and the suggested coursework is the design and pedagogic rationale for an online course. Now, if they do that, then each of the tasks feeds into this. I mean, the brainstorming to some extent establishes the criteria under which a course might be relevant to run, where the advantages would outweigh the disadvantages in the particular context. They are looking for the task design for a particular thing; they are looking at ways of organising collaborative learning and whether it's a good idea. They are looking at the way the moderator should behave. They are looking at other resources they could pull into their course. And they are looking at how to evaluate that course. And they are told that. But it's not strictly "This fits into that" but they can build a large part of their coursework through the course. But this is not a compulsory definition. They can define their own coursework in negotiation. Although over half do this. In which case they can call on elements. But we don't assess the individual things. And that's because of the way we understand (the institution) regulations. I'm not saying that's the way the regulations are. It's possible we could stretch the regulations in ways we're not sure about. But I would be wary about trying to assess too much of this individual level. There's quite a lot already, even as the tutor steps back quite a lot, about them feeling that the tutor is very much in control. That the medium opens up the opportunities for a lot more student collaboration, and a lot more students taking control, but that the various structures in the University make that difficult. They often feel that. And I think to put assessment upon the individual elements would actually make that worse rather than better. To the best of our knowledge there is no other example within the (institution), well I think I'm certain in fact, within the (institution) there is not example on any course of collaborative assessment. And so we would have to establish a particular case for it, and we've got enough argument - difficulties in a sense over trying to establish that such a course has consistent standards with something else without actually having to try and change the assessment. We can see some point in it, but we just haven't gone that far.

[Lecturer]

So in practice, the thing is not - the frustrating part of it from my point of view is that it's not nearly as collaborative as I would like it to be. I mean, I think it's a very useful medium for people collaborating, because I think this kind of - this problem of different people's lives and different people's rhythms and priorities within it, especially within a course like this where there are other deadlines and other things that people are supposed to be doing, what happens in practice - and also this course is assessed by an essay and that is a fundamental problem because what that means is that all the effort and time that you are putting into this [online discussion]is neither here nor there really. You may be committed yourself, and very interested, but that isn't something that is going to count. I think that the assessment thing is a major issue.

[Student]

There's been quite a lot of pressure on us as far as each task - each task has been posted up there, and it has had quite a lot of reading and resources to go with it, and I've found that compared to some of the other courses - direct face-to-face courses; OK you've got three hours, you come to a lecture, you've got reading, you can define a time which might be 3-5 hours, say 5 hours per week on that - whereas with this course, I've found that it's taken up a lot more time than that. And I'm a little bit resentful of that. You respond, etc. That takes a long time. Whereas, if you turn up for a lecture, three hours goes by, the lecture finishes, you've had your discussion, and you've done your preliminary reading which has hopefully been given to you in the form of a handout, and it's all there. You don't have to download, and print, and things like this. And work off-line on message - that's another factor, I've found cost, I think, I mean (lecturer) says, it's true, I'm a full-time student. I can come in to the (institution) every day and use the computers here, but obviously it's not convenient because I am doing other things, I am actually working part-time and so on, for some of the people who work full time, and some of the part-time, particularly the full-time because they are not earning, to me cost is an element. You know, it costs me £50 a month to go on line. At the moment I'm paying £50 to my cable company to have my computer attached to the Internet, and for using it for the course, which is mainly what I use it for, I'm paying phone charges and phone line connection charges, it is costing me £50 a month. Which is a lot, for me, and I'm earning. A few hours a week.

[Male student]