Online Course Observation Room Links are posted for online courses that maybe accessed without a password including CHES online courses and other courses from other universities. Also, winners of online course awards are posted along with information about the awards programs.
Students get practice in the sue of e-mail, and bulletin boards.
Religious Dimensions is the demo course site for online courses at the University of Central Michigan. The course provides some good examples of ways to use online tools, such as a communication center where students can easily use e-mail, a messaging forum, online chat, and a general contact for their Web courses. It contains a Helpful Hints section with detailed information about course organization, a Library with distance education student links, a Unit Study Outline with a sequence of work suggested for each unit, and a Help section that contains a site search engine. This course received an honorable mention by the Paul Allen Virtual Education Foundation in the 1998 Outstanding Online Course Awards. Homepage, very detailed information about how the web page was created and what it contains, and prominent use of case studies that it calls scenarios.