WHAT ARE THE PERCEIVED BENEFITS OF PARTICIPATING IN A COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION (CMC) ENVIRONMENT FOR DISTANCE LEARNING COMPUTER-SCIENCE STUDENTS

M205-STILE (''Students' and Teachers' Integrated Learning Environment' ') project used a Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) environment to assist student learning on a Computer Science course which catered fo r both technical and non technical students. The participants, some 11 0 students and 9 tutors, were based in the U.K. and Europe. They were on-line for a period of 10 months, from February to November 1995. The provision of conferencing, email and WWW facilities enabled the stude nts to: communicate with their tutors and fellow students; to download extra electronic course materials; and to;post their computer code el ectronically, rather than by Royal Mail. This paper discusses the stud ent-tutor, and the student-student exchanges in two of the tutorial co nferences. It focuses upon the students' and tutors' perceptions of th eir interactions on-line. Students' and tutors' reactions suggest that the preparation of responses off-line provided time for students to r eflect on their own understanding of the domain. Our results cast ligh t on how improved understanding of the domain is possible through the different modes of communication made possible in a CMC. environment. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.