An intricate web - designing and authoring a web-based course

The Internet offers a great opportunity to deliver dental education in new ways. However, to achieve the maximum benefit from this medium, it is necessary to understand its strengths and weaknesses and, above all, not to lose sight of the key principle that in education it is the message and not the messenger (the content and not the medium) that should be given priority. After a brief introduction, this paper considers the principles of designing online programmes. It stresses the need for ensuring that students have easy access to the materials that have been designed and then describes `learning objects' and virtual learning environments (VLEs). It concludes that with some notable exceptions, dental educators have hardly begun to grasp the benefits of web-based teaching and learning.