| Communication Tools | |
|---|---|
| Discussion Forums | BasicDiscussion forums are online tools that capture the exchange of messages over time, sometimes over a period of days, weeks, or even months. Threaded discussion forums are organized into categories so that the exchange of messages and responses are grouped together and are easy to find.TechnicalDiscussion forums tools are very similar to Usenet newsgroups where text conversations over time are displayed. The organization of the messages can be a simple temporal sequence or they can be presented as a threaded discussion where only messages on a specific topic called a thread are displayed in sequence. |
| File Exchange | BasicFile exchange tools allow learners to upload files from their local computers and share these files with instructors or other students in an online course. Note: File attachments to messages are part of Internal Email and Discussion Forums.TechnicalFile Exchange tools enable downloading files and upload or posting files over the Web from within the course (a.k.a. assignment drop box). |
| Internal Email | BasicInternal email is electronic mail that can be read or sent from inside an online course.TechnicalEmail tools enable messages be read and sent exclusively inside the course or alternatively the tools enable links to external email addresses of those in the course so that contacting course members is facilitated. Internal email may include an address book and some address books are searchable. |
| Online Journal/Notes | BasicOnline Notes/Journal enable students to make notes in a personal or private journal. Students can share personal journal entries with their instructor or other students but cannot share private journal entries.TechnicalOnline Note/Journal tool enables students to make notes about course experiences. These notes can be personal or private. Students can share personal notes with an instructor or other students. They cannot share private journal entries. This tool can be used to facilitate writing assignments where parts are written over time and then later assembled into a document. This tool also can be used to make personal annotations to pages of a course that can later be used as a study aide. The Online Notes tool can also be used to record reflections about personal learning accomplishments and how to apply this new knowledge. |
| Real-time Chat | BasicReal-time chat is a conversation between people over the Internet that involves exchanging messages back and forth at virtually the same time.TechnicalChat includes facilities like Internet Relay Chat (IRC), instant messaging, and similar text exchanges in real time. Some chat facilities allow the chats to be archived for later reference. Some chats can be moderated, similar to the notion of "passing the microphone." Other chats can be monitored, where an instructor can view the conversation in a room without their presence being broadcast. |
| Video Services | BasicVideo services enable instructors to either stream video from within the system, or else enable video conferencing, either between instructors and students or between students.TechnicalVideo Services include tools for broadcasting video to those without a video input device. Some video services provide for two-way or multi-way video conferencing which may be point-to-point connections or mediated through a central server. See also Real-Time Chat and Whiteboard. |
| Whiteboard | BasicWhiteboard tools include an electronic version of a dry-erase board used by instructors and learners in a virtual classroom (also called a smartboard or electronic whiteboard) and other synchronous services such as application sharing, group browsing, and voice chat.TechnicalApplication sharing allows a software program running on one computer to be viewed, and sometimes controlled from a remote computer. For example, an instructor using this feature can demonstrate a chemistry experiment or a software utility to an online student and allow the student to use the demonstration software from their own computer. Group Web Browsing allows an instructor to guide learners on a tour of web sites using a shared browser window. Voice chat allows two or more to communicate in real time via microphones, conference call style, over an Internet connection. |
| Productivity Tools | |
| Bookmarks | BasicBookmarks allow students to easily return to important pages within their course or outside their course on the web. In some cases bookmarks are for an individual students private use, and in others can be shared with an instructor or amongst an entire class. Some systems also allow bookmarks to be annotated.TechnicalBookmarks allow students to easily return to important pages within their course or outside their course on the web. Systems vary in allowing students to store their bookmarks in a course folder, a personal folder, or a private folder. Course folders are open to all students and instructors in a course. Personal folders contain bookmarks that individual students can share whereas bookmarks in private folders are for the students own use. Bookmarks can sometimes be annotated and categorized within folders. |
| Orientation/Help | BasicOrientation/Help tools are designed to help students learn how to use the course management system. Typically, these tools are self-paced tutorials, user manuals, and email or telephone helpdesk support.TechnicalOrientation/Help tools enable students to make the best use of the software. These tools provide instruction about and job aids for using various aspects of the course management system. Student support tools may include context sensitive help, hints, and wizard style assistants. Some product providers include courses in how to study effectively and/or how to work in online groups. A student helpdesk does not typically offer help with course content. |
| Searching Within Course | BasicSearching within a course is a tool that allows users to find course material based on key words.TechnicalSearching tools enable students to locate parts of the course materials on the basis of word matching beyond the user's current browser page (which can be searched using the browser>edit>find menu). |
| Calendar/Progress Review | BasicCalendar/Progress Review tools enable students to document their plans for a course and the associated assignments in a course.TechnicalCalendar/Progress Review tools often enable students to check their marks on assignments and test, as well as their progress through the course material. Students can sometimes compare their marks on an assignment with the average score on that assignment, view total points earned, total points possible and percentages per unit, per item and overall course grade. |
| Work Offline/Synchronize | BasicWork offline/synchronize is a set of tools that enable students to work offline in their online course and for their work to be synchronized into the course the next time they log-in. Sometimes students download course content to their local computers and sometimes they access content on a CD-ROM. Course content that resides on a CD-ROM can also be linked to dynamically within the online course. A course placeholder automatically returns students to the location in their course where they were working the last time they logged off.TechnicalThe ability to work in a course environment offline and/or to automatically return to the location in the course where you were working the last time you logged off, is especially useful in situations where communication links are unreliable or expensive. The offline environment is essentially a local client application that embodies the important features of the online product without a continuous connection to the Internet. Tracking and student performance data are automatically uploaded into and synchronized with the student performance database the next time the student logs in. The course placeholder tool is essentially an automated bookmark that returns users directly to the page of the course where they had stopped working the last time they logged off. |
| Student Involvement Tools | |
| Groupwork | BasicGroup Work is the capacity to organize a class into groups and provide group work space that enables the instructor to assign specific tasks or projects.TechnicalSome systems also enable groups to have their own communications features like real-time chat and discussion forums. |
| Self-assessment | BasicSelf-assessment tools allow students to take practice or review tests online. These assessments do not count toward a grade.TechnicalSelf assessments encourage students to take responsibility for their own learning and to monitor their learning progress. Self assessments can also facilitate student motivation if students receive feedback on the self-assessments and if there is a direct connection between the self assessments and the measurement instruments the instructor uses to determine final course grades. Note: For information on the different question formats, e.g., multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank, see Automated Testing and Scoring. |
| Student Community Building | BasicStudent Community Building tools allow students to create study groups, clubs, or collaborative teams.TechnicalStudent Community Building tools can encourage and support the growth of student friendships and partnerships. Some products enable students to create and manage these groups. Some products also allow these groups to be formed at the system level, rather than the course level. See also Discussion Forums, File Exchange, Real-Time Chat, and Groupwork. |
| Student Portfolios | BasicStudent Portfolios are areas where students can showcase their work in a course, display their personal photo, and list demographic information.TechnicalStudent Portfolios are often located on or are a part of students personal homepages in each course. Some products provide a private folder and a public course or team folder that students can use to display their work. Students personal homepages typically give them access to course content, internal email, course announcements, and the course calendar. See also Calendar/Progress Review for tools that allow students to track their progress in a course. |
| Administration Tools | |
| Authentication | BasicAuthentication is a procedure that works like a lock and key by providing access to software by a user who enters the appropriate user name (login) and password. Authentication also refers to the procedure by which user names and passwords are created and maintained.TechnicalAuthentication systems can involve a single logon which is the most user friendly and most vulnerable to hacking. More complicated systems can involve layers with separate logins for each layer and secure socket layer transaction (SSL)encryption. |
| Course Authorization | BasicCourse authorization tools are used to assign specific access privileges to course content and tools based on specific user roles, e.g. students, instructors, teaching assistants. For example, students can view pages and instructors can author pages.TechnicalStudents and instructors typically need different tools to complete their instructional responsibilities. For example, students need to be able to view their records in a grade book but instructors need to be able to view and modify the records of all students in the course. Most course management systems provide a small set of default user roles. Some systems allow institutions to add and define additional user roles. |
| Registration Integration | BasicRegistration tools are used to add students to and drop students from an online course. Administrators and/or instructors use registration tools but students also use them when self-registration is available. Students can also be added to or dropped from an online course through integration of the course management system with a Student Information System(SIS). Registration tools include secure credit card transactions.TechnicalSome registration tools allow administrators or instructors to add or drop students in batches through the use of formatted text files. Time limited student self-registration may also be available to shift the clerical burden of the process to the students. Registration tools include the integration of the course management system with an administrative student registration or information system. Integration with Student Information Systems (SIS) enables the course management system to work with products such as SCT Banner, Peoplesoft, or Datatel. Typically, integration allows the following types of functionality: shared common student information, ability to transfer grades between the SIS and the course management system, and the ability to have common accounts. The registration tools for secure transactions involve making arrangements with financial institutions for the funds to be transferred to the college or university. These arrangements may have a separate cost structure. See also Authentication for information on secure socket layer transaction (SSL) encryption. See also Optional Extras for third party credit card support and international pricing. |
| Hosted Services | BasicHosted Services means that the product provider offers the course management system on a server at their location so the institution does not provide any hardware.TechnicalAn important aspect of Hosted Services is that the product provider takes responsibility for all technical support and maintenance of the server, as well as the actual web service of providing online courses. |
| Course Delivery Tools | |
| Course Management | BasicCourse management tools allow instructors to control the progression of an online class through the course material.TechnicalCourse Management tools are used to make specific resources in a course, such as readings, tests or discussions, available to students for a limited time only or after some prerequisite is achieved. This deliberate unfolding of the course resources can be used to prevent students from being overwhelmed and discouraged. Some systems enable this course management to be individualized so that course experience can be tailored to accommodate individual learner situations. Note: The management of testing is covered in the Automated Testing and Scoring feature. |
| Instructor Helpdesk | BasicInstructor Helpdesk tools help faculty members use the course management software. These tools typically include telephone contact with the helpdesk of the product provider and documentation, instruction, and/or listserves. Instructor Helpdesk tools may also enable faculty members to participate with other faculty in online discussion forums to share ideas or build knowledge.TechnicalInstructor Helpdesk tools often do not include assistance with content or instructional design. |
| Online Grading Tools | BasicOnline grading tools help instructors mark, provide feedback on student work, manage a gradebook.TechnicalOnline Grading Tools enable instructors to mark assignments online, store grades, and delegate the marking process to teaching assistants. Some tools allow instructors to provide feedback to students, to export the gradebook to an external spreadsheet program, and to override the automatic scoring. |
| Student Tracking | BasicStudent Tracking is the ability to track the usage of course materials by students, and to perform additional analysis and reporting both of aggregate and individual usage.TechnicalStudent Tracking tools include statistical analysis of student performance data and progress reports for individual students in the course. The progress reports generally consist of both activities and the time stamps of when the activity occurred. |
| Automated Testing and Scoring | BasicAutomated Testing and Scoring tools allow instructors to create, administer, and score objective tests.TechnicalSome products provide support for proctored testing in a suitable computer lab classroom as an approach to ensuring academic honesty. Note: See also Online Grading, Self Assessment, and Student Tracking. |
| Curriculum Design | |
| Accessibility Compliance | BasicAccessibility compliance means meeting the standards that allow people with disabilities to access information online. For example, the blind use a device called a screen reader to read the screen but Web pages need to be designed so that screen readers can read them.TechnicalIn certain jurisdictions, there are legal requirements that web pages must meet in order to comply with existing accessibility legislation. A prominent example of this is Section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act, sometimes referred to simply as Section 508, which dictates that U.S. institutions receiving federal funding must ensure their electronic content meet certain specific standards in order to ensure accessibility. See http://www.section508.gov/ for details. The other large accessibility initiative is The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) group which publishes the Web Consortium Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). The are guidelines that web page authors (and the systems that produce web pages) should adhere to in order to make their content minimally accessible (Priority Level I), reduce accessibility issues (Priority Level II) and improve the accessibility for most users (Priority Level III). For more information on the WCAG, see http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WAI-WEBCONTENT-19990505/ A site called Bobby Services, is a free service that allows developers to test web pages, to help expose and repair barriers to accessibility and encourage compliance with existing accessibility guidelines, such as Section 508 and the W3C`s WCAG. For more information about Bobby, see http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp. |
| Course Templates | BasicCourse templates are tools that help instructors create the initial structure for an online course.TechnicalInstructors use templates to go through a step-by-step process to set up the essential features of a course. Course Templates are artifacts of particular pedagogical approaches to instructional content and process. The local value of particular templates will depend in part on the match between the template designer's approach and the specific instructor's approach. |
| Curriculum Management | BasicCurriculum management provides students with customized programs or activities based on prerequisites, prior work, or results of testing.TechnicalCurriculum Management includes tools to manage multiple programs, to do skills/competencies management, and to do certification management. These tools may be similar to the tools used in student services as part of providing academic advising to students. |
| Customized Look and Feel | BasicCustomized Look and Feel is the ability to change the graphics and how a course looks. This also includes the ability to institutionally brand courses.TechnicalCustomized Look and Feel also includes the branding of content with institutional logos and navigation to provide a consistent look-and-feel across the entire institutional site and the integration of the system with additional institutional resources such as the library. |
| Instructional Standards Compliance | BasicInstructional standards compliance concerns how well a product conforms to standards for sharing instructional materials with other online learning systems and other factors that may affect the decision whether to switch from this product to another.TechnicalInstructional Standards Compliance involves trying to make it possible for applications from different product producers to work well together. There are presently several proposed standards but the most prominent are the standards developed by the IMS Global Learning Consortium that define the technical specifications for interoperability of applications and services in distributed learning and support. The IMS standards can be found at www.imsproject org. The SCORM standards-in-progress integrate the industry specifications from IMS, AICC, IEEE, and ADRIANE and are operational standards with corresponding compliance test suites for learning objects (www.adlnet.org/main.html). In terms of compliance there appear to be three levels: awareness of the standards, claimed partial compliance, and self-tested compliance with the SCORM test suites. Other migration considerations are situations that would make switching to another application more complicated, such as proprietary data formats for content which make it difficult to import course content into another application. Also there are sometimes situations that complicate the upgrading from one version of the software to a later version. To the extent that student data is maintained in the system there can be separate complications in migrating non-course information to other versions or platforms. |
| Instructional Design Tools | BasicInstructional design tools help instructors creating learning sequences, for example, with lesson templates or wizards.Technical |
| Content Sharing/Reuse | BasicContent sharing/reuse enables specific content created for one course to be conveniently shared with another instructor teaching a different course perhaps even at a different institution. Sometimes the content is in the form of learning objects. The system may enable sharing and reuse with a special file server or digital content repository that includes some form of digital rights management that spans campuses and even institutions.TechnicalContent sharing/reuse is a specialized form of digital publishing that is tailored to online learning situations. It is similar to the sharing and reuse of course templates that are stored centrally and used in more than one course, but different in that the content generally includes learning materials like lessons or learning objects and the access is managed centrally. There are several technically different variations including: content management systems, digital repositories, and content syndication systems. These systems are also similar to databases of content where the access to specific content is managed with an authorization process that can protect the intellectual property. |
| Hardware/Software | |
| Client Browser Required | BasicClient Browser Required is the type and version number of the Web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer 3.0, Netscape 4.0) that works effectively with the course management system.TechnicalBrowser version numbers are important. If a product provider indicates that their course management system works with, for example, Netscape 4.78, that implies that it does not work with Netscape 4.5, 4.0, or 5.0. On the other hand, if the product provider indicates that their course management system works, for example, with Netscape 4+ that implies that it works with all versions of Netscape from version 4.0 up through and including the most current release of Netscape. |
| Database Requirements | BasicDatabase Requirements are technical specifications for the database management software (e.g. Oracle or SQL) required by the course management system.TechnicalDatabase Requirements involve the matching of APIs between the specific version of the course management system and the specific version of the database software. This matching of the APIs must be kept current as upgrades to both types of software products occur over time. An important aspect of any software product is the hardware on which it resides. For some course management systems, the database requirements include hardware requirements. |
| Server Software | BasicServer Software includes tools technical administrators use to run the software on the server.TechnicalServer Software tools include a variety of software packages that provide infrastructure for the course management system and enable technical administrators to effectively operate the server. Server Software tools often include utilities for installation, security, resource monitoring, crash recovery, and remote access to administrative functions. Note: For related information see Windows Server and Unix Server. |
| UNIX Server | BasicUnix Server means the course management system runs on a server using some variant of the Unix operating system. The Unix Server feature includes general information about hardware requirements such as disk space, memory (RAM), and CPU speed and model.TechnicalHardware requirements vary greatly based on usage and growth plans. We highly recommend that you check with the product provider for specific hardware requirements that fit your estimated usage and growth plans. Note: For related information see Windows Server and Server Software. |
| Windows Server | BasicWindows Server means the course management system runs on a server that uses some version of the Microsoft Windows operating system. The Windows Server feature includes general information about hardware requirements such as disk space, memory (RAM), and CPU speed and model.TechnicalHardware requirements vary greatly based on usage and growth plans. We highly recommended that you check with the product provider for specific hardware requirements to fit your estimated usage and growth plans. Note: For related information see Server Software and Unix Software. |
| Pricing/Licensing | |
| Company Profile | BasicThe company profile includes public information about the company or organization that provides the course management software.TechnicalThe company profile can include the following: Founding date, owners, investors, and/or founders, location of the organization, number of employees, stock exchange ID, previous company names, affiliations with other organizations or universities, e-learning product acquisitions, tax status (i.e., 501C). |
| Costs | BasicCosts include start-up costs, ongoing costs and technical support costs.For a more in-depth look at how to estimate technology costs, visit the WCET Technology Costing Methodology project. TechnicalStart-up (installation) costs are the initial expenses involved in purchasing or using the software. Ongoing costs are the expenses for maintaining the software after the initial setup, such as upgrades and new versions of the software. Technical Support Costs are the expenses of purchasing software assistance from the vendor, e.g., help desk for users via email and/or phone, assistance with servers, networks, or interfacing with other softwareSee also Open Source for definitions of GNU. Note: Prices and fees are in US dollars unless otherwise indicated. |
| Open Source | BasicOpen Source means the software is delivered with the source code and the license agreement gives the licensee the right to modify and redistribute the software.TechnicalA representative open source license is the GNU General Public License (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html). The official definition of Open Source software is maintained by the Open Source Initiative (http://www.opensource.org/index.php). Edutools classifies products as open source even if the license agreement restricts redistribution of the software and/or who can access the source code, if the license agreement provides the source code to licensees for free and gives them the right to modify the source code for their own use. |
| Optional Extras | BasicOptional extras are features or extras added to the product that may or may not add to the cost.TechnicalOptional Extras are additional tools, products or services that are intended to work with the application. This is an omnibus category that also includes product features and tools that are otherwise not covered in other feature descriptions. Consequently, descriptions of optional extras between applications may not be directly comparable. |
| Software Version | BasicThe Software Version is the release number on a specific version of the software.TechnicalOften a product provider supports two or more active versions of the same product. For example, a product provider might support version 5.0, 5.5 and 6.0. Products 5.0 and 5.5 are basically the same but product 5.5 contains a few enhancements or improvements. Product 6.0 is probably a major release and thus may contain significant changes and/or improvements. Some vendors do not number their products and some vendors number only specific product components. For hosted systems all users always have the most current version of the software so these systems only have one active version at any one point in time. |
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