Acronyms

Acronyms
An acronym is a word made up of the initial letters of the words in a phrase. E.g. CAL is an acronym for 'Computer Assisted Learning'. It is standard practice to give the acronym in its full form at its first occurrence in a passage. Be careful not to assume background knowledge from your likely readers. Be particularly careful if you are working in a technical area.
Sometimes acronyms assume their own life, e.g. URL. Many people know the significance of this term without knowing what each letter means (This is no problem and they therefore do not need to be explained). Sometimes acronyms are curiously descriptive. E.g. MAD*

In this article to date much use has been made of the acronym CAL (Computer Assisted Learning). It can also been described as Computer Aided Instruction (CAI), Computer Based Training (CBT) and many other acronyms and while it is used in the main to describe the use of a PC in the learning process it is much more appropriate to think in terms of Technology Based Education. This term could in fact be used as a generic term for all methods of teaching including traditional lectures, text based materials and the PC based instruction. In addition to these methods there are a number of other technologies that can be used in which staff may not recognize any learning potential.

In recent years the numbers of students entering Higher Education (HE) has increased dramatically without a relative increase in human resources. Figures of a 30% increase of students in HE by the year 2000 have been projected, and since 1991 higher increases than these have already been experienced by the University of Glamorgan Business School (See App 1).

*MAD = Mutually Assured Destruction. A common acronym in the years of the Cold War between the USA and the (former) USSR, roughly 1950-1980