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By Dominic Maher, 21 July 1998 15:59

NEWS Oxford University is to run courses over the Internet from January, as part of the Technology Assisted Lifelong Learning (Tall) project. Building on the face-to-face courses that are already running at the University, Dr Geoffrey Thomas, director of the department for continuing education at the University said: "This will be extended by using the Web". He added that the first three courses will cover computing, history and immunology. Money was raised from the Higher Education Funding Council and from Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, now at the Virtual Education Foundation, who donated $500,000 for research into the immunology course. Thomas explained that the intention is to "make Oxford more accessible in other flexible ways. The University has many part-time students and this scheme will vary the forms of delivery in which students can learn. We need to see how we can extend access to high qualification education through new technologies." With 15,000 students already registered through the department, Thomas is expecting up to 100 students to be involved in the online venture.