Virtual degree course allows students to study from home

Undergraduates will be able to study for the Essex University course in business studies without ever having to leave home.

Instead of going to classes on campus, they will log onto the Internet to hear their tutors delivering lectures in real-time before taking part in seminars with fellow students.

A special icon on their computer screens will allow them to click to put their hands up and contribute to the discussion.

Other icons even allow them to laugh at jokes or clap.

The development marks a huge break with the traditional three-year residential honours degree.

It ties in with a Government plan to boost the numbers at university by "widening access" and giving workers alternatives ways of studying.

The new course is aimed at undergraduates who are unable to quit their jobs to study or who have young children.

However the shift away from classroom-based degrees is certain to prompt fears of a threat to academic standards.

The designers of the new course claim that, unlike existing internet-based degrees, it recreates the experience of a residential degree.

Special software is said to allow students to listen to lectures and take part in classroom discussions in real-time.

Students will never have to leave home - not even to take exams.

Instead the course will assessed entirely by essays and longer projects which are emailed to tutors for marking. These will contribute to their final grade and they will also be assessed during online discussions.

Online degrees firm Kaplan has been allowed to set up a college affiliated to Essex University to deliver the courses.

Named the Kaplan Open Learning, the college will confer Essex University degrees on students who successfully complete them.

Alan Jenkins, managing director of Kaplan Open Learning, said the course was the first to be offered "entirely online".

He added: "It is purely online and there is no classroom attendance at all, so a person from Penzance does not have to travel into Birmingham or London to attend a tutorial.

"It includes online real-time lectures. It replicates everything that is the classroom but in an online environment, for example students discussing, students asking questions and students handing in work."

Students will even be assigned a graduate mentor to help them stick to their courses, he said.

Tutors will attempt to guard against plagiarism and fraud by running written work through sleuthing software which detects phrases lifted from the internet.

It believes it is unlikely unscrupulous students will draft in others to complete assignments for them.

Mr Jenkins said: "We believe that is a very remote prospect because of the frequency of assessment."

Students will initially be offered a two-year foundation degree in business studies, whose fees will be £2,400.

The aim is then to allow them to take a third top-up year - also entirely online - to give them a bachelors degree.

Further foundation degrees are currently being planned including criminal justice and IT.

Professor Sir Ivor Crewe, vice-chancellor of the University of Essex, said the courses would open up higher education "to those who have the ability and ambition but for reasons of work and family cannot attend university in the conventional way".