Last autumn, Jerald Schutte of California State University in Northridge divided a class of 33 students taking his course in statistics into two groups. The “ traditional ” group was taught in a classroom every Saturday morning for 14 weeks. The “ on-line ” group came together only for examination s at the start and end of the course. N one of the students in either group knew they were part of an experiment. The on-line group used electronic mail to cooperate in groups of three, assigned casually. T hey also took part in weekly discussions held on the Internet and weekly “ live ” on-line talk session regulated by Schutte. A t the end of the course, the on-line students scored 20 per cent higher in their exam. A subsequent questionnaire indicated that they had spent more time on their coursework, and that they understood the material better. S chutte attributes the virtual students ’ success to their eagerness to discuss their work on-line. The traditional students tended to work in isolation. “I would say the cooperation resulted from being afraid of having no face-to-face interaction with a professor, ” Schutte says. H e does not think that the on-line students became more enthusiastic simply because of the novelty of working with the Internet, “ most of that gave way to discouragement due to the technology problems. ” “ We believe you can’ t dispose of the help of a teacher, at least in schools, ” says Jeff Morgan, director of communications technologies at the UK National Council for Educational Technology, “ though the results are perfectly reasonable for university-age students. ”