One course = many online courses.
At my college we are getting requests to communicate/provide materials to the students at many levels. First we have the college level (which to be fair is already well catered for with website/intranet etc).
At the other end we have the "Class" of students where a teacher wants to provide stuff to their class.
What I am seeing is both a build up and a trickle down from both sides. Taking the class - some teachers teach the same course to more than 1 class and want an area all of their students can see, some teachers want to collaborate with their colleagues and so have an area that all the staff and students for a particular course (or even group of closely related courses) can access. Some take this further and have an "Subject Area" that covers all students on all courses related to that subject.
Trickling down - some Faculties want to communicate to all their staff and students (rather than the whole college) (as an aside there has been requests for communication to staff and not students at the faculty level). Each Faculty is made up of several Schools and some of these have started making noises about having somewhere for just the school.
So conceptually I am dividing them out into 3 levels
High level Mass communication - The College/Faculty/School level (these will be Organisations to use the Bb terminology) These will be a bit of a hodge podge used to do all the things that the group that asked for it wants to do.
Subject/Course Materials - these will hold all the material that a student taking a course would need. Will consist of all students that ever take that course.
Communication/Collaboration - this will be a specific class and will last as long as the class does. Will be used for coms and test and survays as well a group work and class projects. The students grades for a course should be stored here.
Well thats a start...
Keywords: course setup
