~Future+Directions

This page discusses areas we would like to expand or new technologies that we were not able to use given the project time constraints.

**Course Management System**
Although we have not implemented it, we are using Moodle for the discussion boards. We are aware of other CMS products. In particular, Learning Activity Management System (LAMS) (features, website, demo) is a management system that works well with other web2.0 tools. LAMS uses a visual metaphor to show students their progress. It is well suited for collaborative activities through its automatic grouping mechanisms and chat/scribe feature. We would also like to explore building a Facebook-like course where the course is subsumed by the social networking environment.

Social Bookmarking
Currently, all bookmarks are integrated into the curriculum and located near the concept. It may be useful to have all course bookmarks stored at Diigo or Delicious, where they could be tagged by week and topic and students could provide feedback (comments).

Automated Problem Generator / Intelligent Tutoring Program
While we know that both commercial packages and research in this area exist, we would like to find a free and open source question and answer generator. Given current technology, we understand the shortcomings of natural language processing and see that it would not work for many of the humanities, but the domains of Physics and Mathematics are perfectly suited for it. We would like to find a system that could take a question template and generate an infinite number of problems by varying variable values, which parameters are missing, Madlibs-like context qualifiers, and degree of difficulty. This application would be used to foster student self-assessment and practice.

Accessibility
We have not made the course accessible to students with visual impairements. There are guidelines for making websites more compatible with text readers. In addition, we need to provide captions for the videos and transcripts.

Open Source Content
We relied heavily on open-source instructional content. On a positive note, the content was used in smaller "chunks". As a result, we could lose access to a fairly large portion of the content (or replace it), without impairing the quality of the curriculum. We also believe that the broad array of "smaller" content is well suited for the Digital Generation, who are accustomed to content "mashups".

Version Control
One major problem with the architecture of our online course is changes. We would only be able to change a weekly assignment if there were no students using it. In addition, we might face major problems if we had to replace an important web2.0 component. A course management system (CMS) provides change management so that small portions of the course can be changed without disrupting the students taking the course.

Professional Development
We will use a social networking mechanism whereby teachers can share suggestions with other teachers using the course and the instructional designers.

System Availability
Our course assumes that all of the online content and web2.0 services are available. Currently, we have no provisions for students if several of the key systems are down. We need to explore adding offline capabilities, including a file repository of printable documents.

**Calendaring & Scheduling**
Our course progresses in weekly increments and we assume that students will use a Google Calendar, although the Edmodo calendar is also a possibility. We need to invest more time time to look at scheduling. There will be projects that span several weeks and they may have milestones due. What do we do with a student who misses a significant portion of time and needs to have their due dates adjusted?

**Consolidate Tools**
**
 * In the future we would like to consolidate the number of tools, accounts, and platforms a student is required to have access to. This streamlining would go a long way toward making the course cleaner and more organized. As it stands now, we selected the best tools without much concern for how well they play together. Google is using its marketing muscle to induce niche web2.0 providers to integrate their application with Google Applications (demo). The integration allows users to authenticate once using their Google account. The application also has access to Google data, such as contacts, e-mail, and calendar. Another single-login worth monitoring is the OpenID effort.

**Individual Pacing**
One of the concerns that we have with our online course (and online courses in general) is how to handle issues surrounding pacing. Some students will inevitably fall behind for any number of reasons and others will want to advance ahead of their cohort. Outside of the narrow window for which we have planned, where stragglers and overachievers are in the minority and can be attended to with extra attention and greater assignment difficulty, we have no definitive answer. Some ideas that we discussed are pretty out there because they calling for restructuring of what a course is, but that is the nature of brainstorming.


 * ** Stagger the Course **

Instead of offering a single class to 50 students who most likely will be subdivided into smaller, more manageable groups anyway, why not offer the course in a temporally staggered fashion? This shift would reduce the risk of traditional pacing issues as teachers would only have to spend extra effort on students in the lead and trailing groups. Everyone between the bookends could easily join the cohort originally ahead or behind them for the time it took them to grasp the material and progress.
 * ** Add Knowledge Application Weeks in Between Sessions **

This would allow for extra practice, independent/group projects, or labs for students who are on track and catch up time for the ones that are not. This would double the length of the course, but why not? Teachers could take on a lighter, more advisory role over those weeks in between sessions.
 * ** Modularize the Course and Provide Multiple Levels of Detail **

It would be useful if students could take a pass on a unit and come back to it later. The derivations of trigonometric functions are very important and you should eventually learn them, but are they important enough to keep students from applying them or advancing to material that they might be more excited about? By temporarily abstracting away some details, students could stay on schedule and return to those details at a later date. Maybe with more motivation and experience on their side, what seemed challenging before, would no longer be. Modularizing the course may help students get over humps that normally derail students in traditionally paced courses.
 * ** Remove the Concept of Student Learning Tracks Entirely **

Student would be allowed to start and stop whenever they wanted. There would be less student cohesion within units, but I have a feeling that people would self-assemble their own learning units and move along by themselves. Though rudimentary, our student progress spreadsheet serves this function by allowing students to find other students that are at the same location in the course as they are. My discussion questions and activities would be geared to them first. We would still have to plan for the lone student scenario though.
 * ** Provide Extra Critique and Feedback **

As long as there is a professor or equivalent human resource available to provide critical feedback and answer specific questions, I am happy going it alone without other dedicated students moving along with me. I am fine with an asynchronous discussion forum / knowledge base built around common ideas from my assignments and having the teacher as my only guaranteed contact. This allows us to decouple the content in the course from the discussion about it. I would like to see a teacher-approved "like-minded" discovery system, so that I could be put in contact with people studying similar things, but not necessarily in my class, my school, or even my country. Why shouldn't a kid in Hawaii discuss projectile motion with students studying the same thing in Toronto? The specifics are not as important as the underlying substance.

While these are just brainstorms, we would like to think about these issues in more depth in the future.