Thanks to Phil Butcher of the Open University for information about this system, which was developed from a report by Professor William Dorn of the University of Denver who was a Fulbright-Hay scholar at the UK Open University in 1972-3.

The online computer-based system enabled students at Open University  study centres scattered around the UK to

• receive questions
• answer those questions
• receive immediate, automatic, feedback

and tutors in Milton Keynes to

• monitor the performance of students
• monitor the responses

and for both students and tutors to

• initiate a conversation to discuss and clarify misunderstandings using the same telephone line used to transmit the questions and answers.

The system was first introduced in 1977 and is described briefly in Bramer, M., (1980) Using computers in distance education: The first ten years of the British Open University, Computers and Education, 4, 293-301