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Cultural Studies in Cyberspace: Teaching with New Technology

by Sloan-C

ABSTRACT
A search of the World Wide Web reveals more than a million pages dedicated to culture and/or the study of cultural values. It would be reasonable to assume, therefore, that cyberspace would be a particularly fruitful learning arena for students. This essay presents the results of a pilot cultural studies module using the web being undertaken in the Department of Print Media, Publishing and Communication at Napier University, Edinburgh. It outlines the background and rationale for attempting such a module, explains the software (FirstClass) and methods used, and concludes with initial results, impressions and experiences of students and staff using these new teaching methods and techniques to explore changing cultural and cybercultural identities.

I. INTRODUCTION

This paper outlines the experience of the Cultural Studies team at Napier University in teaching a module via ALN. We have recognized that, as Stephen Andriole says, "the only way to improve the design and development process of ALN courses is to engage in systematic empirical evaluation of student judgments about the courses as well as how the courses actually generate desired learning outcomes" [1]. The results of our efforts in this direction are presented here.

We have undertaken the ambitious task of teaching an arts module on-line and in doing so have rebutted the claim that "Some fields... will never be suited to extensive computer mediation, especially those concerned with questions of meaning and value, of culture and philosophy" [2]. Like Eugene Heath in his course on social and political philosophy, we decided that the content of the module "should not differ, in any significant manner, from that which a student would receive in a traditional class" [3], and thus used the technology to work for us rather than trying to bend our purposes to suit the technology. Instead of starting with the skeptical view that a course on cultural practices could not be delivered using ALN, from the outset we endeavored to interweave culture and new technology, while at the same time ensuring, as did Heath, that "the technology did not drive the content" [3]. In fact we have successfully steered over a hundred and fifty students through an introductory module on Cultural Studies using on-line tutorials and in the process discovered that there are some surprising benefits to delivering a course using this method.

This was designed to be taught as a common first year module to all Print Media, Publishing and Communication Department students at Napier, undertaking degrees in Journalism, Publishing, Graphic Communication Management, and Communications. Because these are degrees relating to industries making significant contributions to the "culture industries" (journalism, media, publishing, public relations, and communication), it was felt that what was needed was a method of engaging students in ways that would seem directly relevant to their degree concerns, of combining practical skills with theoretical reflection. Many of them are familiar with the developments of new technology and electronic communication in areas such as publishing and media. The chance to use on-line resources to experiment with such new cultural forces as the World Wide Web proved irresistible to us. In essence, it provided an opportunity to create a module developing reflective practice in tandem with practical application.

Given that the contemplated size of this introductory module, with an initial intake from four degree programs, was looking to top 220 students in the first year, there were other pressing reasons for seeking new methods of module and course delivery. We simply did not have the staffing resources to run both lectures and traditional face-to-face seminars. We needed a way of anchoring discussions around a weekly lecture, but with only two members of staff with a relative background in the area, the idea of running live tutorials, even in seminar groups of 20-25 people, was extremely impractical. The idea of running electronic based tutorials was therefore fixed upon, seemingly providing us with an efficient way of instigating on-line discussions, monitoring student learning, and creating a way of encouraging student participation from those normally disempowered in traditional tutorial settings either through gender, language or self-identity barriers. This point is also made by John Bourne et al., who have discussed the positive aspects of asynchronous learning networks [4], and one which we will explore in more detail later.

We also created a Web page for students to use as a starting off point in their explorations of cyberspace.

This site is continually being updated with new web resources found by both students and lecturers. Indeed one of the course assignments this semester requires students to identify a web site relevant to the topics on the course. This exercise has provided us with a wealth of new sites that students themselves have found useful. As Bourne et al. have noted, few courses on the Web contain much more than a syllabus and a list of assignments [4]. The Cultural Studies team at Napier have developed a computer-based course that, linked with the Web site, offers a much more comprehensive and interactive learning and teaching facility than at first thought possible.

We decided to test out the principles and soundness of utilizing such methods with a pilot run in September 1997, using a flexible learning Intranet engine package called FirstClass, with a view to reviewing the results and fine tuning the module for official launch in February 1998. The pilot module was to be offered initially as a required module to a certain portion of second year students, and offered as an option to certain groups of third year students. The numbers we originally estimated undertaking this pilot was between 80-120. Circumstances were to prove us wrong: the popularity of the subject produced an avalanche of students opting to take the module. The result, after the dust had settled over the first few weeks of term, was a class list of 170! This was no longer a pilot; it was in essence the real thing.

II. BACKGROUND

A. Working the System
Each student was issued a password that allowed them access to the system on the university's network. They were also issued a bound copy of the module handbook, which outlined the course rationale, listed the lecture and reading schedule, and provided information on how to navigate the electronic tutorial system. This was supplemented by hands on training sessions organized during the first two weeks of term. In fact, although we were unaware of his work in this area, our module developed along much the same lines as Stephen Andriole's course on Systems Analysis & Design [1]. Thus it is interesting to note as an aside that course structure and learning strategies can often cross-disciplinary boundaries.

Students could work from any terminal within the university labs on our five main campuses, and were able to gain access remotely from home, if they had a modem. On the Desktop are three icons: the Mailbox contains their personal mail, and the Cultural Studies icon takes them into their conference.

Figure 1. Student Desktop

A red flag against any icon indicates that a new message has been posted in that space. Once they are in Cultural Studies students are presented with a window containing nine icons.

Figure 2. Cultural Studies Icons.

In Read First students find messages concerning recent developments such as the date for the next assignment, changes in reading material, interesting web-sites to visit, web-site readings, suggestions for further discussion, help with accessing the various parts of the system, and so on. Students need to look at Read First before they proceed to the next stage. To gain access to their own tutorial group students click on Course Doorway. They have now entered the second level of Cultural Studies on FirstClass.

Figure 3. Course Doorway Icons.

The students are divided into groups of, ideally, between five and eight members who come together once a week for a lecture on the week's topic which they are then expected to discuss in their on-line tutorial groups. Our intentions were thus very similar to those of Heath: "to preserve many of the features of the traditional classroom" [3], and hence to ensure that the experience of remote learning on FirstClass was as student-friendly as possible.

Tutors access the discussions from their computers and contribute to the development of the debate by posting their messages into individual group conferences. To enter their own tutorial group conference students access Tutorial Room where all group conferences are displayed.

Figure 4. Group Conferences in Tutorial Room

Figure 5 shows what an individual tutorial group's discussion looks like. The most recent messages are at the top; old discussions are tidied up each week into Ye Olde Tutor Messages so that they can be opened if needed for revision. In their own virtual tutorial space students send messages to each other and their tutor just as if they were using email in its more conventional sense. This has the advantage that everything said in a tutorial is recorded and available for future reference. For instance, exemplary essays or very good discussions can be saved and posted up as examples for future students. This is possible in the traditional scenario with essays but it does require multiple photocopies. In the case of tutorial discussions the traditional method does not have this advantage, unless one were to tape every tutorial - a time consuming and laborious process.

Figure 5. Sample Discussion Area.

There is also an opportunity for an on-line synchronous chat with anyone on the course who is logged on at the same time. Under Service on the tool bar is a facility called Who's on Line. Here you can invite anyone currently logged-on to a Private Chat. These chats can be cut and pasted as a message into their own tutorial conference space if desired. This facility is particularly useful in that students can speak directly to each other or to tutors who are on-line at the same time: It has proven a popular method of conferencing because it simulates a face-to-face tutorial and helps to satisfy the desire which many have expressed for a more conventional type of interaction. At one point the Napier team was able to sort out the grievances of one group against a particular individual through such an on-line Private Chat. The immediacy of this type of conferencing in its simulation of the traditional classroom experience might minimize what could become an alienating effect of on-line asynchronous tutorials.

While tutors have privileged access to all areas of the FirstClass system and can change and add information, student privileges are limited for the sake of security. They can, however, go into any other tutorial and see what other students are saying in their conferences. Some of the more adventurous and diligent students do in fact surf the system and then go back to their own group with comments they have lifted from other tutorials. Again this is a benefit that the traditional tutorial does not provide. In Figure 1 we see the People's Cafe to which tutors do not have access: this is designed as a space where students can chat freely with other students, possibly airing their grievances or concerns. The Open Space is designed for comments and suggestions of a general nature. For example, if a student has some information or ideas that they feel would benefit all on the module they can post these in Open Space. Some interesting debates have been generated across tutorial groups using this space. Unfortunately, though, students have tended to use the messages space under tutorial groups rather than the Open Space. We encouraged them to use the Open Space instead as the messages space is designed for tutors' messages or students' queries to tutors. Messages to individuals can be sent to the personal Mailbox space.

Figure 2, Welcome to CS gives a general overview of Cultural Studies as an academic discipline. In the CS Handbook is a description of our particular module and an online copy of the handbook that all students received when they started. Course Suggestions is a space where students can offer their opinions on the course and make suggestions on how it could be developed. Included in the Course Doorway space is a library site, CS Library, where tutors and students post suggestions for further readings, interesting Web sites, and readings downloaded from the web.

B. Working Assignments
Every two weeks an assignment is expected from each group: this is posted in FirstClass and in our Cultural Studies web site. The work is based on their mutual discussions: a different person is nominated each time to write up this group assignment. When the group is satisfied with what has been written the nominated group leader for that assignment posts it in Official Assignments.

Figure 6. Official Assignments

What has been interesting about this exercise is the way in which different groups have co-operated in writing their assignments. For example, some have broken the assignment down into individual tasks to be collated by the group leader, while others have left the entire task to the individual responsible for that particular task.

This kind of group responsibility has elicited varying reactions. There is often a great deal of encouragement from other members of the group for the person responsible for the assignment and many apologies if the assignment falls short of what was expected. Often individuals will take it upon themselves to moan at the rest of the group if they are not on-line often enough contributing their ideas. Much discussion centers around who is willing to write up the assignment, and students try to identify the one that they feel most able to do well. Some peer assessment has also been built into the procedure, although in most cases the students feel unwilling to differentiate between each other's contributions to an assignment and thus tend to divide the marks up evenly.

Four assignments were completed. In the first assignment we combined the real and the virtual by requiring students to visit the National Museum of Scotland and a Website museum. Students had to compare the two types of museum using a variety of criteria: ease of access, labeling of displays, the cultural assumptions behind the choice of exhibits, the success or otherwise of how the exhibit was displayed, analyzing the space within which the exhibit was placed, and the advantages and disadvantages of each museum.

The overall consensus was that the real museum is preferable to the virtual in that it is free and the exhibits are more easily read; downloading from web sites is time consuming, costly, and the eventual pictures on screen are poor in comparison to an actual exhibit. But students did come up with some penetrating observations about how in both cases exhibits are viewed from behind a screen of glass. The benefits of web site museums for the handicapped were discussed as well as the international flavor of web site museums. Students were particularly interested in the notion of labeling in the National Museum of Scotland and how this expressed the cultural identity of the site. Arising out of their reading of James Clifford [5], students also commented on the positioning of artifacts from cultures other than British in the National Museum, and how this tended to reinforce the notion of foreign cultures as static, stereotyped, and of interest only from the point of view of curiosity.

The second assignment focused on shopping: students were asked to visit two very different types of department stores or shopping malls and discuss experiences and impressions. This elicited enthusiastic offers from women group members to write up the assignment. "I never thought that I could combine shopping and university study," declared one gleeful individual. Using their readings of Meaghan Morris [6] and John Fiske [7], students were asked to compare two different shopping spaces. The focus for this comparison was on the way items are displayed, the type of service offered, the geography of the shopping space, who the shops are aimed at in the high and low culture hierarchy debate, and what identities the shops are trying to assign themselves. This generated debate around gender issues and social determination, and suggested links with a previous discussion of cultural identities.

The third assignment focused on looking at definitions of culture in the media and popular culture: in this case they were offered a choice of comparing two soap operas or two popular TV comedies. The fourth assignment involved analyzing common cultural phenomena used to bind society together. Here we asked them to come up with some thoughts on what sorts of things surround the celebration of Christmas. That assignment has been replaced this semester with an assignment on identifying Web sites suitable for the course. Students also took a final exam at the end of the semester.

Our tutorial groups have enjoyed the hands-on experience of these assignments, perhaps partly because they meet face-to-face in the spaces being investigated and thus balance the real experience with the virtual tutorial space. The completed assignment, however, returns them to the computer where it is posted in Official Assignments and downloaded by tutors to be assessed in hard copy. An example of one group's efforts on comparing a real and a virtual museum is included in Figure 7.

Figure 7. A Sample Group Report

All tutorial work was assessed by individual tutorial leaders and the marks subsequently moderated by the Cultural Studies team. The students then received their marks and the tutors' comments as a message in their tutorial group spaces. As tutorial groups can be accessed by anyone on the course, most groups conducted swift surveys to find out how their assignment compared to others. Virtual prizes were given for the first assignment posted and for the best mark: first prize was a meal for two in the People's Cafe!

C. Structuring FirstClass
The model defined here is just one of several permutations available on the FirstClass system. It was designed by the Napier University Cultural Studies team as a pilot and is continually under review as we discover how successful each element of the structure proves. For example, the Home Page and Tech Assistance boxes remained resolutely unused by students and have been discarded in this semester's module. On the other hand we added Ye Olde Tutor Messages when we realized how cluttered the tutorial spaces became after a week's discussions.

The People's Cafe remained unused for some weeks, but once students became familiar with the system they started using this space as a means of comparing their thoughts away from the virtual gaze of their tutors. Students chose their own group names as a first unofficial assignment, and these names replaced the numbers that groups were originally assigned. If future students are given access to selected conferences from previous groups this could constitute a further level within our FirstClass structure. Thus the format and the titles applied to spaces are flexible: the whole system can be structured according to the needs of the individual department and the students concerned. It can be refined and extended at any time if the need arises.

III. RESULTS

A. Monitoring and Support
One of the first things we noted about utilizing this new technology was the level of support it demands from a wide variety of groups within the university. This type of system requires levels of advanced and continuing support from technical and service departments in a way that traditional classroom teaching does not. Items such as compiling class lists in advance to register students for passwords and systems use, allowing time and utilizing personnel to train students and monitoring the system to ensure that the virtual classroom did not crash, require high levels of coordination, support and cooperation among a variety of university departments and support sectors, a matter not always easy to achieve even under the best of circumstances.

1. Course Development and Monitoring Time
Another important point about this type of teaching is the amount of time spent monitoring and developing the system, and the manner in which this time is allocated. The two module leaders took responsibility for 10 tutorial groups each. A graduate student was also brought on board to take charge of four tutorials. We found that the time spent monitoring these tutorials averaged about 5 hours a week per cluster of ten groups. This is half the time we would have expected to put into running traditional tutorial hours, indicating that such systems can deliver a considerable savings in general teaching hours. However, there is a considerable amount of front-and end-loaded activity that such a figure does not take into account. For example, creating the virtual classroom demands time and energy: you are the one who has to create the classroom, and do the equivalent of cleaning up before and after use, putting in the virtual tables and chairs and taking away the virtual leftovers! In this our experience of FirstClass is very similar to that of Heath who spent an average of thirty minutes a day monitoring eight students, but found setting up the SUNY Learning Network (SLN) to be quite time consuming [3].

Here is a breakdown of the type of tasks and work such on-line learning environments might require, and how much time we spent on average for each:

a. Initial Site Creation and Course Development Time
(Course development took place over 6 months between May-September 1997)

1. Creating the virtual classrooms, tutorial groups and icons: 1 1/2 hours
2. Creating module handbook, module details, reading list and student information pack: 3 months
3. Creating student accounts and passwords: 4 hours
4. Organizing and creating lists of student virtual tutorial groups: 2 hours
5. Organizing and running 14 one and a half-hour student training sessions: 21 hours:

b. General Class Monitoring Activities
The following tasks represented ongoing teaching activities taking up an average of 5 hours a week individual lecturing staff time:

1. Moderating and monitoring student tutorials;
2. Answering student questions on-line, either as posted messages or in online private conference chats;
3. Posting assignments, readings and other module material;
4. Monitoring and tidying up the system: checking for system crashes, deleting obsolete items, tidying student messages and postings into folders.

c.Course Assessment Activities
Staff time dedicated to course assessment activities proved variable but clustered round assessment dates and patterns. Times spent on the following activities therefore proved difficult to measure accurately:

1. Researching and developing module assignments;
2. Researching and posting material from the World Wide Web to support lectures, tutorials, and course assignments;
3. Marking assignments (including moderating and collating marks);
4. Posting student marks and feedback;
5. Creating and marking final exam.

B. Student Reactions
1. Student Resistance
What we encountered was a surprising and interesting resistance by students to the new technology, as well as a slow process of adaptation over the course of the module. In part this was due to unfamiliarity with the new software, which meant many students did not come onstream and do substantial work in their tutorial spaces until the third week of the term. The resistance was also in part due to the changing work patterns that online study demands of students. Students were not used to dealing with a lack of a fixed time and place for tutorial presence and participation. Whereas traditional tutorials and seminars demand attendance at certain, identifiable periods during the week, virtual tutorials do not. Students also discovered that electronic tutorial participation required short but frequent visits to the virtual classroom. Some students found this quite liberating. Others attempted to maintain their traditional modes of study and work patterns, logging on infrequently or at the last minute before the lecture. Many learned the hard way with their first assignment that this was not always the best policy. Those who attempted to complete the assignment at the last minute found they had not built up sufficient reflective discussion to present an effective comparison. Those who had did better. Students seemed to have learned from this, and on subsequent assignments have generally organized and managed their time and work more efficiently as a result.

2. Student Adaptation
Following on from this was student adaptation of old frames of reference to deal with new ones. As noted earlier, one of the most popular aspects of FirstClass was its facility for allowing realtime on-line chats, whereby students could send messages to a screen shared between a group of them -- a variation of the cyber chat room. Students liked this facility of instant communication, which is basically a virtual version of what often occurs in real tutorial spaces. Quite frequently their tutorial discussions ended up taking place in chat rooms. Since no record of such chat rooms survives after the computer and the links are closed down, students soon realized, however, that we, the tutors, were left with no evidence of their having engaged with the assignments and reading. Many of them hit on the idea of copying the contents of such chats into a message that could then be sent to their tutorial space, which led to some long evenings spent reading several screens of data.

As mentioned earlier, we focused student discussions around a weekly face-to-face lecture as we felt there was a real need for students to have some opportunity to meet their lecturers and to come together as a group. To this end Heath registers some understandable reservations about the use to which computer technology can be put as a teaching medium in the arts if all material is delivered via the computer screen:

As a delivery mechanism, the computer offers flexibility and convenience; however, if some feature unique to the computer serves as the focal process of the course, then it is all too easy for the technology to dominate the content: Learning is limited to what can appear on the screen, careful reading is replaced by colorful graphics, and thought and reflection is subordinated to the retrieval of information and the composition of brief comments. [3]

Our weekly lectures avoided some of the pitfalls suggested by Heath's concerns, and we refrained from posting full texts of lectures on FirstClass as we feared the consequence would be that students would not attend the actual lectures. Although we did post brief lecture notes and quotations these were not a substitute for the lecture.

Likewise we found that students, once they had become used to posting their views on-line, would do so while at the same time organizing times and places to meet face-to-face to work on their assignments and discuss issues. It made for an exciting cross fertilization of learning patterns: frequently students would post notes making references to comments fellow tutees had made in these informal working sessions, or post messages setting agendas for future meetings. The FirstClass tutorial space acted both as a sounding board for discussions and reflection, and as a convenient posting space for announcements and confirmation of meeting times and dates. It is also worth noting that students would often seek out lecturers in their offices if they had some pressing problem or needed to speak privately. On these occasions we often took the opportunity to question students on their experience of FirstClass and to elicit suggestions for improvements to the module and the system. Some students who were uncomfortable with virtual tutorials have suggested the possibility of building in the occasional real tutorial to help them feel more at ease, and certainly that is a possibility for anyone who chooses to adopt this system for teaching purposes within a campus university.

3. Student Learning
These adaptations suggest an important point about utilizing electronic teaching techniques. Students value situations that fix and allow learning to take place in group situations and through some form of face-to-face or simultaneous contact. Students also felt more comfortable working in groups where they knew other individuals, partly reflecting the problems that the anonymity of on-line tutorials can often present. Initial face-to-face contact between tutorial members, perhaps during training week, is an issue bound to prove crucial to the success of such modules. On the other hand, the flexible tutorial work allowed students to fix their own schedules and work at their own pace. We found that when the system was eventually made available for off-campus use by students, many were logging on and working from home. Older students with families and individuals who lived outside Edinburgh found this a particularly attractive aspect of the module: a point which confirms the observations of Bourne et al. [4].

At the same, time, we found that the weekly lecture provided a crucial anchor to the module. It was a fixed point in the module schedule, bringing students together to fix themes for the week, present an overview of the readings and amplify on matters raised during tutorials over the week previous. We found that our weekly lectures were quite well attended as a result: monitoring student attendance sheets showed that the weekly average was 100 out of a final class total of 155. (Around 15 students had dropped out of the course or university attendance by the end of the semester.) Our conclusion is that modules that allow a combination of flexible learning and traditional contact methods are more likely to succeed than those that do not.

In the context of cultural studies, one very positive point about utilizing electronic tutorials and the Web was the opportunity it gave students to be exposed to, reflect upon and comment on the growing influence of and changes wrought by computers and cyberspace culture on society today. Comparing cultural identities and institutions as fixed in their present physical and mental surroundings, with such identities as reconstituted in cyberspace, such as we did with our first assignment comparing real and virtual museums, provoked strong and considered responses from students. It was a valuable way of introducing and discussing cultural theories utilizing examples drawn from immediate contexts and virtual spaces.

4. Student Questionnaire Responses
Over a third of the class, (55 out of 155) returned the seven page electronic questionnaire we sent out over FirstClass towards the end of the semester. While this may not be a totally reliable sample it does confirm some of the findings made by Andriole [1] and suggests a positive response to the experience of studying Cultural Studies on FirstClass. We had in fact expected a higher degree of computer literacy among our students than appears to be the case: 70% said that they were relative beginners with the technology. Despite this a significant minority, 30%, felt that they were more confident in tutorial participation on-line and 48% found no difference between the FirstClass tutorial experience and that of traditional tutorials. They also tended to spend more time in virtual tutorials;

• 23% said they spent 2 hours a week on average on tutorials;
• 25% spent 3 hours a week on average;
• 18% spent 4 hours a week on average;
• 31% spent 5 or more hours a week on average.

In other words, 74% spent 3 hours or more a week working in electronic tutorials. Informal discussions with students taking the course this semester also confirm these findings -- one student commented that FirstClass was "cool"! Initial impressions from students this semester suggest that they do indeed spend more time thinking about their ideas before committing them to tutorial rooms and that they also, in many cases, contribute more fully to discussions. Indeed our findings concur with the impressions of Bourne et al who suggest that ALN "Scales up to many learners: potentially much richer than classroom discussion" [4]. Of course, as in traditional tutorials, some groups develop more dynamically than others, but it is clear from comparing our experience of conventional tutorials (where much of the discussion tends to be tutor led) to the level of debate generated across tutorial spaces in FirstClass that students are compelled to contribute more than they might usually do, and that tutor intervention or comment is not nearly so crucial as it is in the traditional tutorial. Students with language difficulties found the module particularly liberating. One Japanese student was delighted to be able to take her time and express herself more eloquently without worrying about her pronounciation. This student informed us that without the experience of discussing Cultural Studies on FirstClass she would not have had the confidence to go on to take our Theories of Popular Culture module this semester.

The social dimension of the module is also worth mentioning at this point. Student messages to each other were, on the whole, genuinely friendly and designed to elicit thoughtful responses. Often very bouncy and lively contributions were made which suggested to us that students were feeling confident with the system. Some even delighted in spicing up their messages by playing about with different fonts and colors and then showing these off to the rest of their groups. They soon learned that, except for assignments, electronic messages did not have to be rigorously accurate, although they would apologize for really outrageous mistakes. Interestingly Rupert Wegerif notes how one of his tutors using FirstClass actually deliberately included spelling mistakes in his early messages to his groups in order to put them at ease [8]: this is a tactic we employed as well. Generally students were very supportive of each other and would respond promptly to cries for help with the system when difficulties were encountered.

We were also pleasantly surprised by the reaction of female students. The male/female ratio was pretty evenly split, and the women students seemed to spend as much time on the computers as the males, reflecting the fact that initial training helped to make all students more comfortable with and aware of the possibilities and potential of FirstClass. In the end 68% of the sample felt that all students should have the experience of using FirstClass, and 78% said that they would like to use it again for university study. All this suggests a strong endorsement of our method of delivering the module, and despite the initial unavailability of FirstClass across the entirety of the Napier system (rectified by the 8th week of the module), and the periodic crashing of the system, the overall response appears to be very positive.

IV. CONCLUSIONS

What our experiences have shown is that Cultural Studies can function well when allied to new technology and the potential of cyberspace. The opportunities for exploring new cultural frontiers and utilizing them to reflect on contemporary cultural concerns and theories are unlimited and exciting, both for students and teachers. Initial results show, though, that care must be taken to permit room, time and real space for students to mix, discuss results and make the most of their virtual experiences. Likewise, there must be a strong and adequate network of system support from a variety of university sources to ensure efficient and timely delivery of teaching and learning objectives.

REFERENCES

1. Andriole, Stephen, Requirements-Driven ALN Course Design, Development, Delivery and Evaluation. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 1(2), 57-67, 1997.
2. Massey, William F. and Zemsky, Robert. Information Technology and Academic Productivity. Educom Review 31, 13 January/February, 1996.
3. Heath, Eugene, Two Cheers and a Pint of Worry: An On-Line Course in Political and Social Philosophy. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 2(1), 15-33, 1998.
4. Bourne, J. R., McMaster, E., Rieger, J., and Campbell, J. O. Paradigms for On-Line Learning: A Case Study in the Design and Implementation of an Asynchronous Learning Networks (ALN) Course. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 1(2), 38-56, 1997.
5. Clifford, James, On Collecting Art and Culture. In: During, Simon (Ed.), The Cultural Studies Reader, London: Routledge, 29-43, 1995.
6. Morris, Meaghan, Things to do with Shopping Centres. In: During, Simon (Ed.), The Cultural Studies Reader, 295-319, 1995.
7. Fiske, John, Shopping for Pleasure. In: Reading the Popular, London and New York: Routledge, 2nd Impression, 13-43, 1990.
8. Wegerif, Rupert, The Social Dimension of Asynchronous Learning Networks. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 2(1), 40, 1998.