October 2004 — Web/Net

Print this article

Click here to receive your FREE subscription to T.H.E. Journal

Course Management Systems and the Reinvention of Instruction

By Craig Ullman and Mitchell Rabinowitz

In addition, these tools facilitate the creation and publication of Web pages — typically, template-driven forms consisting of text and images. Audio or video streams also may be accessed through the CMS, usually by means of a hyperlink. The most common example of these tools is the creation of online tests. Test-authoring tools, in particular, support a variety of question formats (e.g., multiple choice, short answer, essay, etc.). Some tools only support text forms, whereas others support the embedding of graphics and hyperlinks into the test.

Virtual Community. Every CMS enables instructors and students, individually and as a group, to communicate online. Communication can be synchronous (as in chat), whereby two or more people exchange text messages in real time, or it can be a virtual classroom that usually includes chat with a whiteboard and/or PowerPoint slides. The communication can also be asynchronous, as in a threaded discussion, whereby multiple users enter text comments based on a general question or in response to a previous user’s comments.

Data Management. For students to access course material, the CMS must allow for the creating of classes, as well as the assigning of one or more instructors and a number of students to that class. Most platforms also allow students to register for a class online rather than being registered by a teacher or system administrator. This form of registration may capture information beyond simply confirming the legitimacy of the student’s access to the content; for instance, the student’s e-mail, home address and similar personal information may also be collected. Alternatively, the CMS might be connected to the database of the school’s registrar, whereby student data is automatically supplied to the CMS.

Some platforms also enable students to pay for a course, which might be included in the CMS itself, or “pass through” to the university’s online e-commerce system. Typically, access for both teachers and students is rigorously password protected, as password management by a system administrator is an important feature in every CMS.

Each system also offers the ability to capture students’ performances on tests and their resulting grades. Grading functionality usually includes the ability to enter grades for papers, projects or tests not done online. Thus, the system becomes the complete online grading book for the instructor, regardless of the amount of testing done online. Most systems’ grading functionality also enables teachers to compute weighted averages of the students’ grades throughout the semester to generate a final grade. In addition, students can access their previous coursework online, including the tests they submitted, notes saved and the like.

Making Use of the CMS

How the CMS is implemented usually is left to the individual university — or more often, the individual instructor. This position, in fact, is common in the software industry. It’s practically an axiom for companies to know their products are succeeding when customers use their software in ways that were never fully imagined by the programmers.