Building a web-based course for Cambridge medics: deconstruction, reconstruction, integration

In the spring of 1998, the Board of the Faculty of Biology of the University of Cambridge sanctioned a project to transform a long-standing traditional course in Medical Sociology, delivered to the first-year undergraduate medics, into a stand-alone computer-aided learning (CAL) package. The course consisted of 10 hour-long lectures, a number of tutorials (known in Cambridge as ‘supervisions’) and, at the end of the course, a formal written examination. The same course was also being delivered as part of the Cambridge Diploma of Public Health, which involved many small groups being taught the same material. It was this factor which made distance delivery and self-directed study desirable and increased the project’s cost-effectiveness.