Course Management Systems Support Online Learning

Course Management Systems Support Online Learning

Course Management System is a Suite of Educational Tools used by an entire school or school district.

More and more students are participating in classes offered over the Internet. Although an exact number has not been compiled, reliable sources estimate that between a half million and a million students from kindergarten through high school take one or more courses online. Just as a physical classroom contains a chalkboard on which teachers and students work out lessons, a Course Management System is a suite of software that serves as the infrastructure these students and their teachers need to work online.

The Course Management System is not the Course

The software suite that most people are familiar with is Microsoft Office. A small business owner might use several Office programs in the course of a single day: writing a letter in Word to a customer asking for an appointment to make a PowerPoint presentation on a new product; adding the product to the Access inventory database; and calculating the profit margin in an Excel spreadsheet. The software suite enables the business owner to do his or her job, but the software itself was not created by the business owner and is not the same thing as the business. In fact, the same software can be used by many businesses.

Similarly, Course Management Systems enable teachers of online classes to do their jobs. The teacher does not need to develop the Course Management System, but can use it as a tool to deliver course material. The Course Management System is separate from the subject matter of the course, and it can be used with many different types of classes.

A Course Management System is a Suite of Educational Tools

Teachers and students in a virtual classroom will still need software that enables them to write papers, send email, browse the Internet, and perform other common computer tasks. A Course Management System goes beyond these tasks to support the actual process of teaching and learning. For example, the Course Management System, sometimes called a learning management system, provides a mechanism for taking attendance in courses in which students log-in on their own schedule and are not necessarily online at the same time as the teacher. It also provides technology that allows the teacher to give assignments, track student participation, and grade some types of work electronically.

The Course Management System Facilitates Interaction

Some online courses, called asynchronous, allow students to log-in on their own individual schedule. Others, called synchronous, bring the class online all at a set time, along with the teacher. A Course Management System can be used for both types of classes. Importantly, the Course Management System facilitates student-teacher and student-student interaction in both types of courses.

In an asynchronous course, interaction among students and with the teacher might occur via email messages, bulletin boards, or threaded discussions, all supported by the content management system. In a synchronous course, real-time web chats or video conferencing are possible communication tools. For example, IQity's Course Management System includes a LiveBoard that enables an entire class of students to watch the teacher in real-time via web-conferencing and hold a class discussion through an annotation feature.

About Author

Susan Bond is a part of http://www.IQ-ity.com - provider of a top-rated Learning Management System for schools seeking to teach courses online. IQity's LMS includes an online study guide for the Ohio Graduation Test (OGT). Ohio teachers can also add a product review of OGT practice tools at www.ogtpractice.org

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