A substantial body of courseware has been produced in the U.K., but li
ttle is Internet-based. The adoption of this material is being stifled
by a lack of suitably specified delivery platforms, the ''closed box'
' nature of the modules which prevents local customization and the abs
ence of any obvious career development benefits to staff that develop
or exploit it. Courseware consortia have been slow to exploit the Inte
rnet, even for marketing and distribution purposes. The use of proprie
tary authoring software to produce courseware for standalone machines
has polarized thinking away from networked applications. It has seeded
the myth that writing courseware requires expensive tools and extensi
ve experience. Of 42 U.K. geoscience departments, 33 now have a Web-pr
esence. Much of the world-visible information is in the ''marketing''
or ''administration'' category. It is likely that a significant body o
f Web-based courseware hides behind Intranets. Locating good-quality t
eaching and learning resources on the Web can be time-consuming. A sta
rt has been made with a number of virtual libraries. There may be a co
-ordinating role for national bodies to oversee the provision of pages
of ''recommended'' sites, public domain ''imagebanks'' and ''question
banks''. The geosciences would do well to look at what other disciplin
es have already achieved in these areas. The future holds many possibi
lities for distributed and distance learning via the Internet. The arr
ival of low-cost ''fat'' Network Computers may solve the delivery prob
lem by seeing a quantum leap in the level of student ownership. Howeve
r, the rate-limiting control on future developments will be determined
by human and not technical consideration. Currently, the opportunitie
s offered by information technology are outstripping the ability of th
e higher education sector to assimilate and exploit them. Higher educa
tion institutes need to ''surf the wave, not be submerged by it''. (C)
1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.