Course Mangement Systems

I have spent the past eighteen months working on obtaining my bachelors degree from the National Labor College. Through distance education, I was able to work a full time job, hold the office of President of my local and continue my legislative activism in my union while taking courses towards my degree, which I will obtain in June. I am currently looking at Masters Degree programs, including one at Empire State College here in Upstate New York. The National Labor College utilizes a course management system called “Blackboard”. Empire uses a different course management system, called “Angel”.

The phrase “course management system”, also called a virtual learning environment (VLE) is a software system designed to support teaching and learning in an educational setting. A course management system will normally work over the Internet and provide a collection of tools such as those for assessment (particularly of types that can be marked automatically, such as multiple choice), communication, uploading of content, return of students work, peer assessment, administration of student groups, collecting and organizing student grades, questionnaires, tracking tools, and similar (Wikipedia, 2008).

A VLE should make it possible for a course designer to present to students, through a single, consistent, and intuitive interface, all the components required for a course of education or training. Although logically it is not a requirement, in practice VLEs always make extensive use of computers and the Internet. A VLE should implement all the following elements:

·         The syllabus for the course

·         Administrative information including the location of sessions, details of pre-requisites and co-requisites, credit information, and how to get help

·         A notice board for up-to-date course information

·         Student registration and tracking facilities, if necessary with payment options

·         Basic teaching materials. These may be the complete content of the course, if the VLE is being used in a distance learning context, or copies of visual aids used in lectures or other classes where it is being used to support a campus-based course.

·         Additional resources, including reading materials, and links to outside resources in libraries and on the Internet.

·         Self-assessment quizzes which can be scored automatically

·         Formal assessment procedures

·         Electronic communication support including e-mail, threaded discussions and a chat room, with or without a moderator

·         Differential access rights for instructors and students

·         Production of documentation and statistics on the course in the format required for institutional administration and quality control

·         All these facilities should be capable of being hyperlinked together

·         Easy authoring tools for creating the necessary documents including the insertion of hyperlinks - though it is acceptable  for the course management system to be designed so that standard word processors or other office software can be used for authoring.

In addition, the course management system should be capable of supporting numerous courses, so that students and instructors in a given institution experience a consistent interface when moving from one course to another (Wikipedia, 2008).

I have extensive experience using Blackboard and obtained a temporary log-in for Angel, which allowed me to compare the two systems.  Blackboard and Angel have very similar front or “welcome” pages.  Once a user has logged on, they see a condensed listing of courses they are enrolled in. The user has the ability to click on a hyperlink for any enrolled course, allowing them to surf to assignments and discussion rooms for that particular course. The front page also has an area where announcements appear. This area “collects” recent announcements from each of the enrolled courses.

The remainder of the NLC’s Blackboard front page contains a section for organizations that the student belongs to, a section for tasks that the student is responsible for and a sidebar, which contains links to a separate pages for each of the aforementioned areas, plus student grades, a calendar, address book, a user directory, e-mail and other pertinent links. Tabs at the top of the page allow a student to select separate pages containing course material, organizations, the college website and help using the Blackboard system.

In contrast, Angel has a toolbox where students can bookmark their own websites, access files they have uploaded and a calendar. Another section contains an e-mail interface where students can send, receive and manage e-mail messages. Other sections include library resources, links for Angel help, college resources and RSS headlines.

Courses taught on each course management system have areas for professors to post announcements, assignments, course materials, instructor contact information and the course syllabus. They also include a discussion board, where students and instructors can discuss assignments and collaborate on projects.

Where course management systems are not feasible due to technological or cost limitations, other tools can be used. Whereas a course management system is a “one-stop shopping” program for web based instruction, many tools can be used together to gain similar results.

·         Wikis are an excellent place to upload assignments, a syllabus and class announcements. The wiki would operate in the manner of the main page of a course management system, as well as the main page of the individual course.

·         Aggregators can be a useful tool as well. Instructors can post assignments through a blog and students can automatically receive them through an aggregator.

·         Social bookmarking sites allow instructors to link students to material that exists on the web, such as journal articles that relate to the course content.

·         Blogs can be used in place of a discussion room. Students can post assignments, while other students can interact by leaving comments.

·         Lectures can be uploaded through a podcast or video cast service. These tools give students an option beyond reading assignments or lecture notes.

·         Documents and presentations can be uploaded to web office applications which allow students to view, edit and collaborate on assignments without continuously uploading changes to a course management system and without the need for expensive software.

·         Web conferencing sites give students the ability to interact in real time, a feature absent in course management systems. Class discussions can occur through a chat module. Class discussions can be more personal through the use of microphones and web cams.

·         Web poll and survey sites can be used for assessment. Quizzes and tests can be dispatched through sites such as Survey Monkey, allowing instructors to collect results automatically.

Course management systems are easy to use. They give students one format that every professor or instructor uses, regardless of the class. When a course management system is not available, instructors and students still have many tools at their disposal to take their class into the virtual world.

First Web Meeting

I participated in my first ever net conference tonight. The conference was hosted by Bob Winder and was attended by John Johnson, Rob Carlton and yours truly. We used Microsoft Live Meeting as the venue, which is free to test drive for 30 days, after which they charge per month, per user.

We all immediately saw the educational benefits of the internet meeting. Bob uploaded a document so we could see how that feature worked. It would be very useful to upload a meeting agenda, a class syllabus or a class lesson.

Bob then showed us a feature that allows the user to display an image (actually, the content of any file) in the conference. An instructor could display an image and conduct a class discussion surrounding the image. We also found that users can share their computer desktop, which would allow one to share a website they are viewing without having all of the students open a new browser window.

 We also used the whiteboard, where we all took turns typing, drawing and freehand writing. It operates exactly like a classroom whiteboard and would have the same functionality.

The software worked very well and three of four of us were connected via video and audio. Regardless of location, students can interact with one another just like a classroom. The software allows users the ability to “raise their hand” when they want to ask a question, which allows for the same order as a classroom. The video panned to the user who was talking, so each user could see the individual who had the floor.

Our group spent the time discussing online education, the uses for web conferencing and the National Labor College. We also shared some personal experiences. I am grateful to Bob for taking time to set the conference up and am happy I had the opportunity to participate. I plan on utilizing web conferencing in the future for local meetings and labor education.

Political Survey

It seems like every time you turn on the news, another political poll has just been released. Each pollster has different numbers. Their predictions have ranged from spot on to completely out of the ball yard. Since politics will be ruling the news through November, I decided to create my own political survey here:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=y4CRrK0QaSWdXIPa7gwKtA_3d_3d  

Surveys can be a very useful tool in the classroom. Students can get first hand data from their classmates and others when doing research for a project. Educators can utilize surveys to make changes to a syllabus for future semesters.

Online surveys make it much easier to collect and evaluate data. The websites collect the data and begin the evaluation process for you by tabulating the percentage of each response. Since it is easier to click a link than to put pen to paper, web based surveys are likely to generate a lot more responses.