Near to the marks

Sunday Herald, The, Aug 22, 2004

ONE of the more surprising aspects of the LLM in IT course is that the marks gained by those taking the dregree by distance learning tend to be higher than those of the full-time students.

"I think this is a reflection of the calibre of student we have on the distance learning course," says professor Ian Lloyd, head of the course. "We have students from more than 30 countries on the distance learning option, and that makes for a very cosmopolitan group. There is a lot of interacton between the students and they come from a wider range of backgrounds than is found on more traditional courses.

"At one time we had a patents lawyer from the US, and a judge from Uganda. He had some interesting stories to share about being a judge under Idi Amin."

Strathclyde was quick to respond to the growing interest in IT when it set up the course 10 years ago.

"The field of IT law has developed almost out of nowhere, and we found that there was a great deal of interest in the subject. However, most people who were keen to do the course were working, so couldn't attend classes during the day.

"We decided to try offering the degree over the internet. The law is well suited to this, being almost entirely text based. This means we have had some very good people on the course who would never have been able to attend classes during the day."