Professor Timorthy Savage:

I must confess that I told the students I would deal with it on Monday, not on Saturday evening. We provide a quality contract with the online students, because it is different from face-to-face. If they submit an email, the lecturer commits to replying to it within four working days, whereas one would not normally get those guarantees on the face-to-face campus, and the same is true of the number of views on the discussion boards. It is a very different paradigm, there are very different needs and we train and support staff to fulfil those.