Debates have been used to develop critical thinking within teaching environments. Many learning activities are configured as working groups, which use debates to make decisions. Nevertheless, in a classroom debate, only a few students can participate; large work groups are similarly limited. Whilst the use of web tools would appear to offer a…

Online marking and feedback systems are critical for providing timely and accurate feedback to students and maintaining the integrity of results in large class teaching. Previous investigations have involved much in-house development and more consideration is needed for deploying or customising off the shelf solutions. Furthermore, keeping up to…

The answer to massification in higher education lies not in paper-behind-glass style e-learning. Such courses lack the necessary interaction to ensure success. There are perceived upper limits to where e-learning can be up scaled to accommodate large classes. The Community of Inquiry framework provides a convenient instrument to assess the quality…