CS6604: Designing and Implementing Online Education Systems
Classnotes for Tuesday, January 20: Introduction

* Hand out Class Syllabus
* Signup sheet
* Course URL: hhttp://people.cs.vt.edu/~shaffer/CS6604S15
* Course Piazza page: hhttps://piazza.com/class/i4vvbdg0rml6wz
* Verbally introduce each other

Course expectations/requirements (workload)
  - Class project                   45%
  - Peer evaluations of projects:    5%
  - Class presentation		    15%
  - Classroom/forum participation   15%
  - Paper			    20%

Homework for Thursday:
* Look at assignments and start thinking about talk and project
  topics.
* Read the following papers for Thursday (see links at Readings page):
  S.B. Conger, If There Is No Significant Difference, Why Should We Care?
  D.G. Oblinger and B.L. Hawkins, The Myth about No Significant Difference.

Department News: DLS talk by Annie I. Antón on Friday. We might
discuss next week about how her talk topics (security, privacy) relate
to online education.

Introduction: Key questions for the course:
  1) Where have we been? (The history of online educational systems)
  2) Where are we now? (The current state-of-the-art)
  3) What are the theoretical underpinnings? (Pedagogy)
  3) Where do we want to go? (The vision for what we would like,
     and the anticpated impact that it will have on education)
  4) How do we get there?
     (i) Developing a technical program for what needs doing
     (ii) Gain some proficiency in how educational research is
          conducted 

What do I mean by "Online Educational System"?
  - Next Tuesday, Cory will describe some standard software systems.
  - During the course, we will lay out an architecture defining the various
    pieces that might be needed for online systems of the future
  - For now, define it as support for "distance learning" with at
    least:
    * content delivery (ideally for "interesting" content)
    * "Course management" to track student progress (CMS component)
    * Typically some sort of assessment support
  - We are going to look specifically at MOOCs and supporting
    infrastructure. Our principle example for a software system will
    be OpenEdX.
  - With that as a lead-in, we can go to the following discussion
    questions.

Discussion Questions:
  - What courseware have you encountered?
  - What would you like to see in an online educational system?
  - Will online systems doom residential Universities?
  - Will we go to a few "superstar professors" that everyone "gets the
    class from" in some way?