Before designing a course, a faculty member needs to decide how the course is going to be delivered: Face-to-Face, Web-Enhanced, Blended, or Online. The choice you make affects the design process and determines the most effective means to deliver course content and course activities to students.
Face-to-Face Courses
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Face-to-Face courses are delivered within the setting of a classroom, lecture hall or lab. Faculty members meet with students on a regular basis, with a set schedule, time and location. Faculty members rely on verbal communication and printed handouts to deliver course content to students. Assignments require students to submit their work in hard copy. Communication between students and faculty members is minimal outside the classroom and generally restricted to the faculty member's office hours. Currently at AUB, about 30% of courses are conducted face-to-face. Read more
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Web-Enhanced Courses
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Web-Enhanced courses are regular face-to-face courses that have integrated technology tools. Faculty members meet with students on a regular basis, just like they do in traditional courses with a set schedule, time and location. What is different, however, is that faculty members make the content of the course available online, usually in a Learning Management System (Moodle) or a website. Faculty members enrich their courses by uploading the content and using many of the available technology tools. Currently at AUB, Web-enhanced is the most popular course format and is used by about 70% of courses taught at AUB (Fall 2008-09). Read more
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Blended Courses
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Blended courses are a combination of face-to-face instructions and online activities. Designing a blended course allows faculty members to deliver the course content online and substitute online activities for some face-to-face classroom meetings. Some of these activities will be student-centered, meaning the students will construct knowledge rather than receive it from the course instructor. The term "Blended Learning" is used to refer to courses that combine face-to-face instruction and online tools. Read more
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Online Courses
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Online courses do not require face-to-face interaction. All course content and class activities are delivered online using a Learning Management System (Moodle). All course activities are student-centered, meaning the students construct knowledge rather than receiving it from the instructor. This results in changes in the traditional roles of both students and faculty members. Currently at AUB, there are no fully online courses. But that doesn't mean that there won't be any in the future. Read more
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