Ideal Online Course

Designing Courses for 21st Century Learners

Michael G. Moore identified three types of desirable interaction that should occur in a distance course:

Instructor’s Role

Course Management Systems (CMS)

CMS provide a range of tools which support learning and the administration of courses in an online environment. CMS are preferred by instructors as they have features which allow the delivery of virtually any content to students that traditionally was only limited to face-to-face settings. Examples of commercial systems include: Blackboard, ANGEL, Epsilen or Desire2Learn. Examples of open source systems include: Moodle, Sakai, or Atutor.

Features List

• Learning Tools
• Bookmarking/last place visited
• Student area
  • Private directory on course server
  • Batch upload
  • Shared work (see Work Group Areas)
  • Team building
• Library and Information Access
• Annotation (markup) capability
• Glossary help (student generated)
• Course Index/Search Engine
• Learning Exemplars/Guidance
• Access to own grades
  • Progress tracking
  • Assignment reminders
  • Comparison to class averages
• Student guide
• Self-assessment exercises
• Study skill building
• Student Web pages

• Collaboration Tools
• Discussion Options
  • Asynchronous
  • Email (one to one)
  • List Servs (many to many)
  • Text-based conferencing (many to many)
  • Bulletin Board (one to many)
  • Synchronous
  • Chat
    • Archive
  • Whiteboard
    • Archive
  • Teleconferencing
  • Video
  • Audio
  • Live, text-based conferencing
• File sharing
  • Email attachments
  • Message attachments
  • File storage
  • Private directory on course server
  • Public file library
  • Work Group Areas
  • Group Web pages
  • Group conferences
  • Team building

• Authoring Tools
• Course planning
• Course design
• Course templates
• Automated glossary
• Automated course TOC/index
• Course search engine
• File management
  • Instructor file storage
  • Batch upload
  • Batch delete
• Instructor guide
• Course exemplars
• Web search tools
• Multimedia capability

• Course Management
• Instructor information pages
• Course info/syllabus
• Course calendar/schedule
• Announcements/Bulletins
• Student management
  • Student presentation pages
  • Registration
  • Batch upload
  • Batch delete
  • Attendance/Participation Tracking
  • Attendance
  • Participation
  • Gradebook
  • Student access to own data
  • Automatic assignment progress tracking
  • Assignment reminders
  • Automatic grade calculation
  • Class averages auto calculation
  • Assessment
  • Quizzes
    • Timed
    • Repeatable
  • Exercises
    • Timed
    • Repeatable
  • Course Archive/Backup
  • Course replication
  • Course revision
  • Online Help/FAQ

• Administration (Back Office)
• Automated Registration
• Security
• Tech Support
• Student Transcript

Group Activity:

Assess the following course expectations and discuss if this course meets the requirements of a student-centered geared course.  Provide suggestions as to how the course could be improved upon to make it more student-centered and ideal for purposeful distance education. Finally post your response below.