Jane is a new student at AUT in 2011 taking the common
semester. After accepting her offer of place she is pleased to see
that she can choose the time and place of her weekly on-campus
learning/teaching sessions and also support these with online
activities that she can do in her own time. As she lives in
Ponsonby taking a bus to the weekly sessions on the city campus
is an attractive option for her and she calculates this will save
about $40 per week in petrol/parking costs if she had to attend on
the North Shore. The option of evening classes (5-8pm) also
allows her to keep her part-time day job.

At her first lecture she is greeted by a student learning assistant
who is on site at WA220 to support the distributed learning. She
sees and hears the lecturer based at Akoranga in full size and
quality and can also see the students at 3 other sites.
Summarised input from the lecturer is also available as a podcast
from AUTonline and she can also access a full audio recording of
the lecture with supporting material on AUTonline for later revision
if needed.

After 20 minutes the lecturer provides a short quiz to check
students¶ understanding of the topic. This is done by audience
response software linked to the powerpoint for the lecture. Jane
enters her responses on a free client app she has downloaded to
her iPad. Other students use their netbook and notebook
computers and some txt their responses from their mobiles. The
lecturer gets an instant snapshot of student understanding, revises
some of the difficult points, and then asks the students to work in
their shared learning teams for an hour on the next aspect of their
enquiry project. The class disperses into teams of 6 ± some in the
lecture theatre, others in the foyer. All can access the wireless
network. Students at the other sites do the same. Student
learning assistants are on hand to facilitate.

After an hour the students reassemble. It is the turn of Jane¶s team
to present a 3min overview of progress on their enquiry project.
For the next 30 min selected teams from across the 4 sites present
their work via videoconference. Other students give feedback. All
students can see and hear all the presentations. The lecturer
spends the remaining time clarifying issues that have been raised