We call our program “self-paced”, but we do not often mention that, in many respects, it is “self-directed” as well. Although we lay out pathways and course structures and choose particular resources, how you use any of those tools — and why — is ultimately up to you. How you find your way around these […]
“How do I get started?” That is easily the top question we receive, and one that we have been slow to address comprehensively — but consistency and integration of components, clarity of purpose and offerings, and continuing evaluation of the end-user experience will be key. In the mean time, we have taken a small but (we […]
When we started our discussion forums nearly three years ago, we thought ourselves pretty clever. The process is straightforward, n’est-ce pas? Vet the options, imagine the use cases, and construct the perfect environment. So that is what we did. We narrowed down a list of a half-dozen competitors to two or three that best fit […]
Read More… from Mistakes were made; or, the atomization of a forums community
Missing and broken links happen in our courses more often than we would like. They are tough to discover, tough to fix, and frustrating for students in the middle of a course. Seriously, they are pretty bad. To paraphrase the 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life (and paraphrasing that film is our ideal standard mode of […]
Read More… from Filling in the blanks with the WayBack Machine
If you have used our discussion forums, you may have mixed feelings about them. We certainly do. Some forums are very active, while others are very quiet. Flagging spammers and managing your notifications is difficult. Getting someone’s attention, to say nothing of getting a staff member’s attention, can feel like hitting the jackpot. We would […]
Read More… from Try out our (proposed) new discussion forums