Course Management Systems
Course Management Systems (CMS) have become a standard for distance education because they are college/university sanctioned and controlled. These course delivery platforms are web-based and administered directly by colleges and universities. They can be tailored somewhat to fit the needs of the school in delivering online courses. The decision to purchase a CMS is made at a high administrative level because of the initial cost of the system, the training needed, and the ongoing time required by the campus administrator of the CMS's.
The three leading CMSs are WebCT, Blackboard, and eCollege. In addition, watch for newer systems with more teacher requested features being developed and entering the market. One value of these CMSs to tutoring is that they have archival chatrooms where tutoring sessions are conducted and the scripts of these sessions can be reviewed later by the director and tutor for assessment. Most CMSs also provide whiteboards (similar to sharing an electronic Paint window) which quite enhance tutoring math, chemistry, and the other sciences because math problems and science diagrams can be drawn by the tutor and student.
A very useful new tool in using the whiteboard is the tablet PC because all the student or tutor has to do is write directly on the screen with his/her stylus.
Since these CMSs are not purchased primarily for synchronous events or tutoring in particular, sometimes it is a little difficult to tutor within their framework. Listed are a few of the advantages and disadvantages of each system.
One disadvantage of using the WebCT chatrooms is that they close if a tutor wants
to move a student to the whiteboard or another chatroom. As a solution a tutor
can open more than one browser to be able to move from one chat room to another
or to the whiteboard - requiring more capability of his/her computer. WebCT has
four archived chatrooms.
Within Blackboard, both the chatroom and the whiteboard can be open at the same time which facilitates the discussion while letting tutor and student draw and illustrate what they are discussing. With version 6.1 and above, there are whiteboard math and scientific symbols.
Tutors and students using the chatrooms in eCollege can upload Microsoft documents with no HTML conversion. This document sharing feature greatly benefits online tutoring of writing. Both the chatroom and the whiteboard can be opened at the same time and are archived. The whiteboard offers palettes with math, accounting and scientific symbols facilitating writing and working with the problems.
A fourth alternative course management system is Moodle. It is Open Source software, which means it can be downloaded free. Developed by Australian Marten Dougaimas, Moodle has many more features for delivering online courses than the commercial products. His philosophy of learning is referred to as "social constructionist pedagogy," which "not only treats learning as a social activity, but focusses attention on the learning that occurs while actively constructing artifacts (such as text) for others to see or use."So, influenced by his teaching philosophy, Dougaimas has created more features for students to interact with each other and with the teacher by collaboration, activity based learning and critical reflection. Influenced by his computer science background, Dougaimas has kept Moodle easy to use and as intuitive as possible.
Moodle needs to be downloaded from Moodle.org and then installed on a web server or a web site, which the campus IT personnel can do. Another option is to have a web housing company maintain it. It has strong security built in.
Helpful for online tutoring, Moodle has a synchronous chat function and asynchronous forums and dialogue.
In summary, this is the description of Moodle from its Introduction page, "The word Moodle was originally an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment, which is mostly useful to programmers and education theorists. It’s also a verb that describes the process of lazily meandering through something, doing things as it occurs to you to do them, an enjoyable tinkering that often leads to insight and creativity."
