Or are you the type that signs up for a course and then half-way through has to drop it because you can't seem to get out of work before 7:00 most nights? Or are you the one who signs on and faithfully attends, except for the night it unmercifully lashes rain and you decide to stay home and watch the telly instead? When it looks a bit bleak the following week you stay in as well, and by the third week feel you've missed too much to show your face again?

Well, University College Dublin's Adult Education Office is offering you an alternative. DeLTTI (Distance Learning Through Telematics Initiative) is UCD's newest teaching space. It combines the latest in computer technology with disciplinary expertise from one of Ireland's oldest and most respected universities. How does UCD intend to fulfill this lofty goal? Through computer mediated teaching via the Internet.

Through DeLTTI, students not only from Blessington to Ballymena, from Derry to Doolin, but from Paris, Texas to Paris, France can now participate in classes together, discussing literature, understanding psychology, or exploring Ireland's rich archaeological past.

Kevin Hurley, the Director of Adult Education, told me the background to the programme. 'On foot of the 1996 European year of Lifelong Learning we wanted to make a different kind of attempt to reach people traditionally outside our Lifelong Learning Programme. People, for example, who perhaps because of obstacles presented by disability, age or family commitments, couldn't leave home during the evenings, or who lived too far to commute to Belfield or an outreach centre.'

'Up to now we tried to reach some of that market by establishing outreach centres, sending a tutor, say on a Monday night to Baldoyle. And although this strategy was successful, we could only send people a short distance from the city centre. I was excited by new developments in technology and thought this was an opportunity to reach people unable to avail of our traditional Adult Education Programme.'

'We're particularly concerned to use strategies which will ensure that these developments in IT do not reinforce the exclusion experienced by those who are materially disadvantaged. And so side by side with this we will be exploring forms of partnership with other institutions, such as VECs and Public Libraries. '

To this end DeLTTI has hooked up with Adult Education centres like Blessington and Portmarnock who are making computer time available for people in their communities without Internet access at home. If enough people sign into a course, the tutor will be going there to conduct tutorials two or three times a term to see if maintaining the face-to-face contact is necessary to a successful class experience. The same type of relationship with libraries is also being explored.

'I was amazed when our first internet inquiry came from a woman in the United States' Susan Schreibman, DeLTTI's coordinator, told me. 'We had put up the Web site on 1 August, and four days later an e-mail appeared from the States. She was interested in coming to Ireland to do an MA next year, and while reading the Irish Universities sites came across our programme. She's signing up for Commerce With the Muse —our poetry writing workshop.'

DeLTTI is starting modestly this autumn, offering three courses developed and to be delivered by Dr Schreibman, Commerce With The Muse, Writing for Life: How to Express One's Self Better Through Writing (a course geared to developing business and professional writing skills), and New Irish Writing (an exploration of contemporary Irish literature). By the Spring DeLTTI expects to have four more courses on offer, including one on Film Studies and another on Web Design.

I was a bit skeptical of plonking down my £60 and taking a course on the Internet. I thought I'd miss too many things that I get out of a traditional class situation. 'Like going down for coffee during the break?' Dr Schreibman asked. 'Well, kind of', I had to admit. 'I'd miss the socializing.'

'There can still be socializing, but it will be through e-mail and discussion lists. And if there are a few people near each other taking a particular class they might decide to get together and form an informal study group.

To deliver the courses, DeLTTI is using TopClass, a class management system which, as it happens, was developed at UCD's Computer Science Department several years ago on an EC project. It went from being a Campus Company, to an independent company with offices in Dublin and California. It is a closed system (students are issued with log-ins and passwords when they sign on the course) which simulates a good many classroom features: space for class lectures, discussion lists, e-mailing facilities to the lecturer and other students on the course, self-testing, and more.

Lectures in this medium are not the traditional twenty page, 50 minutes speech normally heard by students. Rather, coursework is presented in short units of information, perhaps a screen or two, divided into maybe five pages (or sub-units) per week. Students can read through these pages consecutively or skip around. Sometimes they are referred to other sites on the Internet of related interest.

'It's really a super medium for developing a more student-centred approach to learning', Dr Schreibman told me. 'For example, in my poetry class I was explaining the genesis of a poem by the American poet Ezra Pound. I wanted to explain how he was equating his style of poetry with contemporary art, so I downloaded examples of Representational painting, Impressionist painting, and Cubist painting from the Internet.'

'By allowing students to look at those paintings while reading Pound's description of his poetry in relation to his predecessors' poetry, students could actually see what he was talking about, without me having to go into long convoluted explanations. It allows students to take in the material in a very different way. To a greater extent, they can be in charge of their own learning.'

DeLTTI has been running a prototype of one of the courses over the Summer. 'The Feedback has been extremely positive. One student told me the other day that he was spending too much time on the course —time when he should have been doing other things!

'It's a very exciting Initiative,' Kevin Hurley told me. 'Some continuing education programmes in the US have a few years' start on us. But we're determined to catch up. We have a lot of talent here in Ireland and there's no reason why students in any part of the globe shouldn't be taking courses with us —and not only in the areas of Irish studies.'