Blog : Course Management Tools

Tool: Edx

Website: www.edx.org

Rating: 

Edx- provides free online courses from the world’s best universities and institutions. It hosts online university -level courses in a wide range of disciplines to a worldwide student body, including some courses at no charge. It also conducts research into learning based on how people use its platform. Each learning sequence is composed of short videos interspersed with interactive learning exercises, where students can practice from the videos. The courses often include  tutorial videos that are similar to small on campus discussion groups, on line textbook, and an online discussion forum where students can post and review questions and comments to each other and teaching assistants.  Also EdX learner’s Guide also includes good information about creating an account and the edX DEmo course.

Usage

To explore edX courses, you can sign an account on the eds website: www.edx.org .These sites are visually and functionally similar, but the their purposes & content are different. Edx offers the opportunity to learn from the best instructors from more than 70 global universities and institutions: through streaming class videos via Wi-Fi or cellular connection; views course announcements and handouts; follow along course videos with closed captions and also participate scheduled tutorials.

Review

“Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California, Berkeley, are just some of the schools that you have at your fingertips with EdX. Through massive open online courses (MOOCs) from the world’s best universities, you can develop your knowledge in literature, math, history, food and nutrition, and more. Highly-regarded experts in the field teach these online classes. Using their findings, edX is able to provide students with the best and most effective courses, constantly enhancing the student experience”.- Coursetalk Review

Tool Evaluation

Tool: Nimble Author

Website: www.elearning247.com/nimble

Rating: 

Nimble author is a course creation tool and a Learning Management System. It makes building engaging online learning and assessments remarkably straight-forward.

Usage

Per the website Nimble Author stands out and is used for a number of reasons such as:
• No technical skills needed
• Cloud software means no installation or download required
• Create courses directly from our website
• Publish your courses to SCORM 1.2 in seconds
• Build courses collaboratively
• Add your own logo and colour scheme easily
• Royalty-free image library or upload your own
• Integrated assessment at the end of each course
• Courses are desktop, laptop and iPad/tablet friendly
• Option to add nimble®LMS to enrol students and track results (PAYG LMS included)
Nimble is free to try for an unlimited period. The only limitation is that you need to purchase a licence when you have to export your SCORM course, or enrol learners on nimble LMS.The cost of the annual licence is aproxiamtely $850.00 (€765). However, you may have a 50% discount available for charities and schools. Additional licences can be purchased for £650.00 (€578).

Review

This tool is quite simple to use and works well with a variety of LMS systems however it is recommended that you use it with the elearning247 LMS (the creator of the Nimble Author) Also adding pages and editing them is relatively straight forward and simple. When you edit a template page or start with a blank one, you have the flexibility of adding different content types by clicking an Add button and moving objects around after clicking a Drag button also it allows you to add an Assessment at the end of the created lessons.

Tool Evaluation

Tool: Coursera

Website: www.coursera.org

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Coursera has a diverse and large collection of massive open online courses (MOOCS) from prestigious universities. It offers courses on an international basis and allow students to collaborate with a global community.

Usage

Students can take advantage of the wide variety of courses and learn about different subjects including physics, engineering, humanities, medicine, biology, social sciences, mathematics, business, computer science, digital marketing, data science and more. Meanwhile, educators can track their students’ progress through a web shot and the monitoring of keystrokes while completing the online tasks. Some of the MOOCS offered by Coursera are free but students have to pay a fee in order to enrol in other courses. In some cases, students receive a certificate that proves that they took the course successfully and they can even share it via Linkedin. In addition, Coursera offers a special program for those students who cannot afford a course. Students selected for this program are given the chance to earn a Course Certificate at no cost. Students need to login in order to join a course (they can both create one or use their Facebook account if they already have one). Coursera runs on browser and it has apps for mobile devices. Being this way, users have access to its courses from anywhere as long as an internet connection is available. Coursera offers a wide catalogue of massive open online courses for students who seek inexpensive adult education. It covers a huge variety of subjects and it can help its users to develop new skills.

Review

I just finished the nutrition 101 course from University of San Francisco. The professor Katie Ferrero did a wonderful job using coursea. I understand that there were over 20,000 students taking the class from a few hundred countries. And I’m very grateful to have this free source of knowledge. My only regret is that all older windows XP computers with Internet Explorer eight and below won’t work with these courses. I think it will exclude a large number of people.
Patricia Smith Ed Shelf review. https://edshelf.com/tool/coursera/

Tool Evaluation

Tool: Ed Modo

Website: www.edmodo.com

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Edmodo is a strong communication platform which offers communication, collaboration, and coaching tools to primary and secondary schools and teachers. Its network enables teachers to share content, distribute quizzes, assignments, and manage communication with students, colleagues, and parents. In 2013, Edmodo was included in the list of “The Top Apps for Teachers” by PC Magazine.

Usage

Edmodo is a great way to drive communication inside and outside the classroom. It is an important tool that can be used to remind students of assignments, to develop online etiquette and also to create quizzes, discussion board, and to share content via videos or websites. It encompasses all the important elements of online communication in an educational environment.
Students use the group code they obtain from a teacher to set up accounts and connect with additional teachers. In the typical social media style, they can write posts (which are visible to the entire class or just the teacher) that include embedded media, links, and images. Teachers can see whatever is posted and can choose to moderate posts or put students on read-only mode. Edmodo is free for both teachers and students. Edmodo is an online platform that is really easy to access, you can use a web browser to use it or by using their mobile applications. It requires Internet connectivity in order to work. The output of this tool is a platform for collaboration and communication which will increase the students and teacher engagement

Review

Edmodo is a full-featured social network designed for the educational environment. It has the look of Facebook, which grabs students’ interest, but it also has controls in place to help protect their privacy and promote positive interactions among students and teachers. Pluses: Students can only create accounts with a teacher’s permission, and teachers have access to manage student privileges. Students will like being able to post text, images, and links, and embed videos and other multimedia content. Edmodo is used in more than 300,000 schools by 47 million teachers and students.(US)

Tool Evaluation

Tool: Articulate

Website: www.en-uk.articulate.com

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Articulate Storyline helps in creating polished interactive courses. It is an e-learning authoring software that integrates embedding, onscreen capture, interactivity etc in one package. It is simple enough for beginners and powerful enough for experts. Articulate Storyline can publish elearning courses for mobile Device such as iPad and Android devices. The output of Articulate is compliant with SCORM, AICC and Tincan. One of the biggest disadvantages is that this package-beginning price is 182 euros a month. However, it is set up on a month-to-month payment basis so no contract is required.

Usage

Articulate can be used to publish content online with one click, track who is using and viewing your presentations and run reports that monitor e learning hence it allows an in-depth understanding of the usage and how well the content is being responded to by users.

Review

Articuclate is a useful tool as it has an intuitive user interface and logical way to create advanced interactions. User interface is quite similar to that of Microsoft Office PowerPoint so users feel comfortable with the software quickly. There is a strong community exists where questions or problems can be answered by the community members quite soon. The pictured characters have flexible settings and there is free form and drag-n-drop questions. Also it provides software simulation as well as variables and triggers. Free mobile app for viewing content on iPads and Android devices.
However it has some disadvantages such as a High price, its not compatible with other similar products, there is no feature to publishing to video, there is no opportunity to add a video narration, there is no content adaptation for mobile devices and there is no Conversation Simulation tool.

Tool Evaluation

Tool: Khan Academy

Website: www.khanacademy.org

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Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization created in 2006 by educator Salman Khan to provide a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. The organization produces short lectures in the form of YouTube videos. In addition to micro lectures, the organization’s website features practice exercises and tools for educators. All resources are available for free to anyone around the world. The content available on the website is majorly in English but they have launched Hindi Content recently.

Usage

Khan academy offers free online materials to facilitate learning in the areas of Math, science, computer programming, history, art, economics, and even more free online classes. It does this through tutorials and through providing exercises that sharpen and develop skills in the core areas of the courses. The Khan academy has gained notoriety for its work in free online learning and has received donations from Google, AT&T and the Bill and Miranda Gates foundation in order to further the KA resources. Logging into the site can be done via a Google or a Facebook account for those who do not want to create a separate Khan Academy account. The material can also be accessed through Khan Academy’s own mobile applications, which can be found free of charge in Google Play, App Store and Windows Store.

Review

Khan Academy is designed for self-paced learning, and, in general, it’s a solid resource to supplement classroom instruction on basic math skills. The site is continually growing, and updates include a broader range of subjects and lessons. The dashboard has improved over previous versions: lessons are recommended based on progress, and navigation is easier. A companion iPad app allows video downloads for offline viewing, and there’s even a new version of the site in Spanish. There’s also a new Coach Resources section, aimed at parents, tutors, and teachers, with helpful tutorials on using the site. Parents and tutors may find some of the case-study videos particularly useful in helping kids get the most out of the site. As Sal has said, “What you see today at Khan Academy is a very crude approximation of where we’ll be in five or 10 years.” Review from- https://www.commonsensemedia.org/website-reviews/khan-academy

Tool Evaluation

Tool: Sakai

Website: www.sakaiproject.org

Rating: 

Sakai is a Learning Management System created to support teaching, research and collaboration. Sakai is developed by an international community of universities and small colleges, K-12 systems, hospitals, government organisations, research societies and political parties. Sakai offers a cutting edge platform for online learning.

Usage

Sakai allows developer to upload files using a drag and drop system. It gives you several estructures that will help you to do your development even faster. However, due to its wide range of possibilities it is necessary training and experience to do it effectively. This is also an effective tool as it is available in a multitude of languages such as Arabic, Basque, Catalan, Chinese, German, Dutch, English, French, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Malay, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Vietnamese

Review

Sakai is an open-source software so it has no monetary cost. As Sakai is web-based software it can be accessed from anywhere. However, there are some requisites, you need to be connected to the Internet and you need to have an account to access. Even with a mobile device you can log in to see the content of the course. The output of this software is a course where the user can upload and download resources, make and answer activities such as quizzes, questionnaires or tests. In addition, they will be able to create and participate in chats and forums.

Tool Evaluation

Tool: SharePoint

Website: www.sharepoint.com

Rating: 

SharePoint is an integrated suite of products from Microsoft that allows its users to create a social intranet and a collaboration portal. It can be found as a cloud-based app or as an application running on its user’s infrastructure.

Usage

SharePoint has many features such document sharing, calendaring, discussions and more. In fact, it counts with an app store that allows its users to discover downloadable useful applications.

Its social features (blogs, communities, Wikis, RSS feeds, …) make collaboration easier. It seems that currently its being used by organizations more than by learning environments. However, due to its characteristics it could help the way students organize themselves and collaborate with each other.

Review

There are several licences depending on the needs of its users.

E.g. SharePoint Online is licensed on a per-user basis. It can be purchased either as a standalone plan or included as part of Office 365 plans (SharePoint Online Plan 1 – 4.2€ user/month, Plan 2 – 8.40€ user/month). SharePoint online allows its users to get rid of the overhead of managing an infrastructure of their own. Moreover, as there are mobile apps for Android, IOS and Windows Phone, its content is accessible from almost everywhere as long as an internet connection is available. SharePoint offers a safe place to organize, store and share information that will be available from any device.

Tool Evaluation

Tool: Moodle

Website: www.moodle.org

Rating: 

Moodle is an open-source software learning management system which aims to help educators, administrators and learners to create personalised learning enviroments. It is scalable from a few students to millions of users, robust, secure and private.

Usage

It has a simple interface and drag-and-drope features that make it easy to use. However since Moodle offers many possibilities it requires training and experience to be effective.

Review

Although Moodle is provided freely it requires people to build the system and maintain it. In addition it needs to either have a server in-house or have it hosted on the web.
As Moodle is web-based it can be accessed from anywhere as long as you’re connected to the Internet. You can even access to content on the Moodle platform using a mobile device.
With Moodle you can take advantage of  a powerful set of tools to create an environment that enhance teaching and learning. One of the advantages of using Moodle is that through activity logs you can carry out an exhaustive follow up of the participants.

Tool Evaluation