Unfortunately, many if not most of these sites were ill-conceived, poorly executed and of questionable utility to the courses they were intended to enhance. Time mitigated the situation, but many users still are daunted at the prospect of building and maintaining course Web sites. It is little surprise, then, that tools designed to largely automate the process of creating course Web sites have appeared in the past couple of years. Most of the commercially available products are in their relative infancy and are evolving rapidly. Product offerings from the various vendors tend to be very similar and evolve at similar rates.
Pricing generally is very attractive.
At the same time, some institutions have elected to build their own course management tools either because commercially available systems lack functionality that is critical to their environment or because they began their development efforts before the commercialized tools became available. While the inherent value of a course management system may seem evident, it usually falls to the individual instructor to discern how best to leverage this new tool within the context of a course. This special section of IMEJ is intended to showcase selected successful uses of course management systems as they have been applied to college courses. Two others focus upon non-traditional, or distance learning , courses. Course management software has proven useful in both settings but as is described, the derived benefits may be different.