There has been an increase in the use of e-learning as a form of delivering higher education. Much of the innovation has gone hand in hand with what has been called an 'evaluation bypass' and has seemingly been popular because of its economic efficiency. The literature on new technologies tends to be written by those committed to the innovation. They tend to present innovation as a good, regardless of what the innovation is, and 'resistors' as in some senses deviant. Using the example of the Higher Education Funding Council for England-funded multimedia project, 'Doing Political Research', this paper argues that some degree of scepticism about innovation can be seen as a positive response. Furthermore, the paper argues that the cost-saving arguments put forward by proponents of innovation are illusory. E-learning can be as costly as other means. However, it does offer alternative ways to teach and can be particularly effective at reaching isolated learners. The conclusion is that for e-learning to be effective it must place learning first.

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This paper considers the use of a scripted drama in the teaching of ethics to postgraduate research students. The drama was developed as part of a suite of research training materials called Doing Political Research. These materials were developed with the purpose of using multimedia within an active learning environment. The paper argues that the approach is based on an appreciation of the role of film drama in teaching contexts. Whilst those who have used commercial films in their teaching have questioned the authenticity of the materials, it is argued that a specially scripted drama turns the relationship around. Instead of learning being implied through drama, the drama is constructed specifically to facilitate learning. This use of drama is based on aspects of role-play theory. Students are asked to empathise with the characters in the drama and to draw conclusions about the appropriateness of the characters" actions.

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This study deals with Kosovo war reporting in The Netherlands. It is a first attempt at exploring the possibilities of framing theory for examining the role of news media in the Kosovo-conflict. The details of the analytic scheme are 'purpose-built' for this study. Data were collected from a representative sample of the daily press (January 1- June 30, 1999) by way of a (quantitative semantic) content analysis and a (quantitative pragmatic) reception analysis. In addition to the results we collected from published opinion-polls on the subject we undertook a small survey by way of snowball and Street questionnaires. Within the limitations of our study we can conclude that all survey data are in line with the newspaper content and reception data. The content and reception data show that the Dutch press emphasized "political frames" rather than "military frames" in order to describe the conflict from a NATO point- of view, while it used the "civil" ("humanitarian") frame for blaming agents other than NATO. The Dutch press suffered from one-sidedness in favor of NATO and a majority of the Dutch population supported the NATO-intervention in Kosovo, before, during, and after the conflict. As a consequence, our data indicate that the efforts of NATO to control media frames and public opinion have been extremely succesful in the Dutch case. Additional data that were collected for the UK and Italy Abstracts 631 suggest that these NATO efforts may have been also effective for the UK but certainly less effective for Italy.