Calling All Course Management Systems: There's Undisputed Value in CMS, but You Need to Get the Lay of the Land before You Invest. (Technology)

Warger, Tom, University Business

In only a few short years, course management systems (CMS have become an essential feature of instructional technology at institutions of higher education. After art, these complex software packages assemble multiple Web-based technologies into a single, coordinated suite of instructional services. Online discussion and messaging forums, calendars, syllabi, automated testing and grade posting, class and workgroup e-mail distribution lists and student portfolio pages are among their most used features Importantly, these systems provide Web page templates and text editors that significantly lower the HTML-editing barrier to putting course materials online. Now, the reading CMS products even make it possible to blend multimedia and other digital content into the basic delivery system. Speaking of the advance of technology!

On most campuses, CMS products supplement traditional classroom courses--proving effective for keeping up communication with and among students outside crass hours. But CMS has also established itself as a means of delivering online courses, providing communications, lectures and readings, and roster and gradebook management. Not surprisingly, these systems have facilitated the development of "hybrid" courses that meet once or twice per week in a classroom, and then move into the online mode.

RAPID GROWTH

According to the 2002 Campus Computing Project survey (www.campuscomputinq.net), nearly one-fifth of …

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Publication information: Article title: Calling All Course Management Systems: There's Undisputed Value in CMS, but You Need to Get the Lay of the Land before You Invest. (Technology). Contributors: Warger, Tom - Author. Magazine title: University Business. Volume: 6. Issue: 7 Publication date: July 2003. Page number: 64+. © 2009 Professional Media Group LLC. COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group.

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