Course Management Systems

Choosing a Course Management System is the next step in creating your blended/hybrid course. You will need a place to store all of your resources that also makes them accessible to your learners. However, you will want to make sure that you do not simply "dump your face-to-face course online" (Simonson et al., 2012). You need to make sure that your course takes the students through the learning process. In order to do this, you will want to choose a course management system that works for you, the cooperation and your learners.

Also when looking at a course management system, you will want to make sure that it is capable of hosting all of the technology tools you wish to use in the online component of your course such as discussion boards, project space, evaluation tools and electronic testing (Simonson et al., 2012). There are several different course management systems that you can use. I suggest that you go through each one and explore them in order to figure out which works best for you. You should be able to find tutorials on them within their help section.

Below are some course management system websites you will want to check out.

Course Sites

• Course Sites is similar to the Blackboard format. 

Canvas by Instructure

• Canvas will allow you to try it our for free for 2 weeks. This is where you will need to check with the cooperation you are working with to see if they are willing to spend money on transforming their traditonal training courses into blended/hybrid courses. 

Moodle

• This CMS will allow you to do similar things as Course Sites. You will need to see which fits your needs and your designs. Also, you may want to look into the cost of each. 

Edmodo

• This is another CMS that you will need to pay for but may be able to do a free trial. It has a style similar to Facebook. This makes it seem less like a course and more like communicating between peers. However, you will want to make sure that it contains what you need for your online component. 

No matter which you choose, you will want to take your students through an Orientation Course so they know how to use the CMS. Within the orientation course, learners should also be taken through tutorials and how to use the technologies that will be used within your blended/hybrid course. Below you can go to an example of an Orientation Course for a blended Philosophy 101 course. This will give an idea of what to do for you students to ensure that they can be successful in your own course.

Example Orientation Course

• You may have to create a username and password in order to access this course. Go ahead and do this since it is free. You can use the same username and password to go through and explore Course Sites's CMS. 

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References