[LINK] Google Online Course Builder

[Tom Worthington]

Google have released a software toolkit for creating on-line courses 
called "Google Course Builder": https://code.google.com/p/course-builder/

There is a demonstration course using the software "Power Searching with 
Google": http://www.powersearchingwithgoogle.com/

Google provide a useful non-technical guide to the course "Design 
Process". The suggests a systematic approach to design, which would also 
be applicable to courses which do not use computers: 
https://code.google.com/p/course-builder/wiki/DesignProcess

Google's technical implementation differs from Learning Management 
Systems (LMS), such as Moodle, by requiring more web skills of the 
educator, including HTML and JavaScript details: 
https://code.google.com/p/course-builder/wiki/ImplementCourseMaterial

However, many users of LMS quickly find they run up against the limits 
of the software's configuration features and have to start modifying 
source code (or hiring someone to do that).

Google seems to be aiming for very large courses with hundreds of 
thousands of students, where LMS struggle. But implementing Google's 
approach will be a major task for anyone who wants to start small.

No doubt there will already be people, in and outside Google, working on 
a user-friendly front end which generates the Google code and presents 
an interface to the course developer simpler to a LMS.

But I suspect that Course Builder suffers the same problem which made 
Google Wave a failure: it does not capture the essence of what the user 
needs, in a simple enough way to be usable.

More in my blog at: 
http://blog.tomw.net.au/2012/09/google-online-course-builder.html


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards
Legislation

Adjunct Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science,
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/