The University of Adelaide Science Faculty Extranet, known as Adelaide Science Online (ASO), is evolving into a sophisticated and richly populated web-based electronic environment. Based on the Lotus Notes/Domino database software, ASO is allowing staff and students of the Faculty to manage vital electronic information, functioning as a storage, delivery, communication and transaction system. Students are benefiting from the improved quality and flexibility of access to important teaching materials, not restricted by the traditional barriers of classrooms and timetables. Nor are they being obliged to deal with arcane network architecture. Self-paced learning and learning reinforcement are further significant advantages. Similarly students have improved access to teaching staff through moderated electronic communication and discussion channels. They are also becoming familiar with an electronic working environment will be ubiquitous in their future employment. Teaching staff are being provided with an environment which allows them to better integrate their teaching materials, and manage their courses, including information, schedules, content, assessment and evaluation. It is also fostering a positive attitude of reflection and revision on teaching methods and learning styles.

As the underpinning basis of ASO, Lotus Notes/Domino provides the core functionality and matches the needs of a reliable and secure mechanism for the sharing of documents. Multiple levels of access to ASO are provided systematically and securely (eg administrator, author, browser), whilst the automatic and seamless WWW access provided to Notes databases by Lotus's Domino server technology is most attractive. ASO uses standard WWW-browsers for document delivery, while a mixture of browser and Notes clients is used for authoring. In this shared authoring environment an audit trail is provided that automatically tracks authoring data and allows the creation and uploading of resources without compromising the security of the server and its operating system.

The aim of ASO is to provide the tools to allow academic staff to create significant online resources which are both generated efficiently and managed sustainably. ASO presents information attractively and incorporates sophisticated elements, while the prime requirements are an effective system of efficient information retrieval coupled with convenient navigation. The system also allows the development of online WWW resources, their management and access that is scalable and minimises contact with the html expertise normally required for WWW publication. A critical management factor is that links for WWW access are automatically generated and maintained for resources as they are created.

So far in the evolution of the ASO extranet, tools and templates have been developed to allow the production and implementation of three introductory and advanced undergraduate subjects (in Chemistry, Botany and Geology). A further introductory Physics subject will run in Semester 2. The online course template provides a full management system for subject information, lecture notes, image databases, learning guides, multimedia, self-paced tutorials and other applications - assessment tools are planned. An online electronic discussion facility for asynchronous moderated and threaded inquiry has been trialled as has electronic submission of student assignments. An online template allowing WWW publication of student posters is being viewed with interest in the natural science areas.

Lotus Notes is providing the tools we need to build a system for the management, in ASO, of a sophisticated WWW-based learning environment. In collaboration with another science-based faculty, assisted by pedagogic expertise from Adelaide University's Advisory Centre for University Education and with the support of a CUTSD organisational grant we are also developing an educationally sound and constantly evaluated framework for implementing such online environments strategically into our institutional teaching programme.