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Student approaches to learning vary from surface approaches to meaningful, deep learning practices. Differences in approach may be related to students' conceptions of the subject, perceptions of the learning environment, prior study experiences and performance on assessment. This study aims to explore entering students' conceptions of the unit they are about to study and how they intend to approach their studies. It involved a survey of 203 (of 250) first year students in a cross disciplinary unit in the Faculty of Health Sciences. They were asked to complete an open-ended response survey, including questions on what they thought they needed to do to learn biochemistry and what they thought the study of biochemistry was about. A phenomenographic methodology was used to identify categories of description for the questions. The paper will describe the categories in detail, the structural relationship between the categories and the distribution of responses within categories. The study reports a relationship between conception of the topic and approaches to learning. Students with more complex and coherent conceptions of the topic report that they were more likely to adopt deeper approaches to study than those with more fragmented conceptions. However, compared to previous studies, a surprisingly high proportion of students with more cohesive conceptions still intended to adopt more surface approaches. This may reflect the particular context of their learning, namely in a compulsory unit involving material for which most students have minimal background and difficulty seeing its relevance. Implications for teaching such foundation material are discussed.

In the academics' quest for curriculum implementation of flexible learning and flexible delivery methods, the tendency is simply to reformat subject materials and learning strategies to fit the technology and present them thus online. Attention is too often focused on the technology rather than the educational underpinnings, which eventually leads to compromising both the students and the subject. A multifaceted approach, integrating technological, disciplinary and pedagogical expertise, was found essential in solving this problem. Using this approach and the experience gained during the conversion of a subject taught face-to-face through an online distance mode, this paper aims to focus on the processes that characterize the design and development of educationally sound online subjects. The guidelines include: identifying the target group, consideration of the five stages of developmental cycles, implementation of the subject, and evaluation. Favourable responses from participants, together with a 10% increase in graded passes, suggest that the guidelines are sound.

Online learning environments have a major role in providing lifelong

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