Conclusions   

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

Samuel Johnson (1897).

Those creating online Web courses should:

• strive to develop Web content which promotes active learning, and avoid developing electronic page turners;
• should consider both content and presentation format;
• ensure that the motivation for presenting information in a given format is educationally sound;
• look for ways to measure efficacy of new approaches relative to traditional methods;
• investigate suitable successful pedagogies and techniques from the ITS area which address issues such as level of presentation of information, cognitive retention of information, testing of and feedback to students and which provide intelligent guidance to the student whilst navigating;
• strive to balance the needs and expectations of the communities they serve relative to what technology can reasonably deliver today;
• assist in setting research agendas to develop tools and technologies which will assist in improving student comprehension and understanding, or which save time by automating information collection, collating, assimilation, and presentation.

These courses need to address the quality issues if they wish to be discerned from the "noise on the Net".

There will be severe financial repercussions for those universities that do not embrace the creation of quality online course material since other more progressive institutions that do will be able to service unprecedented numbers of remote and overseas students

Success or failure of quality online courses will not lie with the reader but with the acceptance and certification by Tertiary Institutions of quality multimedia based courses per se. I think that the future will be dictated by financial rather than pedagogical reasons...