Queen's students dial up for results

Gone are the days when students at Queen's University, Belfast, had to trek to the "wailing wall" at the back of the Lanyon Building to check if their exam results had been published.

In a pioneering initiative, the university has enabled students to access their results from anywhere in the world through a Wireless Application Protocol (Wap) phone.

Gavin Mitchell of Queen's computing services, who implemented the system, said students had already been able to access results via a PC, using their registration number and password.

"It seemed like a logical step to take the service on to phones. A lot of the technology was in place, so the codification to Wap pages rather than web pages wasn't so great. We spent a couple of weeks modifying some codes, changing the output from html to Wap."

Mr Mitchell said not all students had access to a PC outside the university and that their 24-hour access to university computers during the exam period had now ended.

"As the Wap technology gains acceptance, there's no point in somebody going all the way to an internet cafe or having to go home to see if the exam results have been released," he said.

Queen's has had 700 hits through the general Wap service and 90,000 hits through PCs over the past month.