“There is so much to say but not enough time to say it. Many educators are attracted to teaching because they like to wax eloquently about subjects they are passionate about. The problem is that there is never enough time during a semester to cover all you want to cover. Once again, technology potentially comes to the rescue with the Course Management System (CMS). A CMS is Internet-based software that manages student enrollment, tracks student performance, and creates and distributes course content. In this way, the CMS enables teachers to extend the classroom beyond its traditional boundaries of time and space….
Rather than thinking of the CMS as a collection of individual functionalities, the teacher should consider the CMS and classroom as a complete seamless experience. From the organizing perspective, the instructor uses the CMS to outline the course as if it were a table of contents, except it actually directs the student to the different aspects of the course. All course material and activities, including listing the classroom sessions, would be presented in their proper sequence. Hyperlinks giving students access to the content itself or to the areas within the CMS would be provided. There might also be text, PowerPoint, audio or video created by the instructor to provide a context for the readings and activities.
Using the CMS in this way enables students to have a richer experience with the material. For instance, the CMS can direct students to read the first part of a PDF and then go to a different section of the CMS that provides a hyperlink to a simulation available on the Web illustrating what they just read. Students then can be directed to a different text, provided by the teacher, which explains the relation between the PDF and the simulation, and provides a transition back to the original PDF.”