Self-paced lectures

There are, in general, two main modes of course content delivery: internal face-to-face lectures and external selfpaced study. In the former the lecturer generally takes students through the relevant material by writing points on a whiteboard or on transparencies or, most commonly, by talking to various points on a PowerPoint presentation. In the latter mode the student reads the various materials outlined in the study guide at a pace and place which suits them. In this paper we describe a trial of some software, known as Macromedia Breeze, that allows students to listen to a lecture, following the presentation on the PowerPoint slides, but which also allows the student to start, stop, revisit and resume the lecture when and from where they prefer via the WWW. The results show that students preferred the higher degree of control and increased level of engagement afforded by the Breeze environment.