Hi, you've been participating in this MOOC, so you now have some idea of what it's like to study on line. A fully on line course may have some elements that look a little bit different than this MOOC however. So I wanted to share with you one of my online courses, so that you could get a better idea. First of all, every course has a home page. Now, the way the home page looks may differ in one college or another, in one course or another, but all of the courses will have some sort of home page with some similar information. The first thing you always need to check on the homepage are the announcements, to see if there's anything that your instructor has recently asked you to do or given you some additional information. From the home page you can usually also find ways to communicate, both with your instructor and with your classmates. In this example we have a place for messages on the page, and we also have another place for an internal email system. The first thing you should check when you start a new course, is the course information. In the course information you'll find the course expectations, some sort of a syllabus or learning contract or description of the course that gives you a more complete idea of what to expect in terms of work load and assignments. You will have important information on how your instructor will be evaluating you or grading you. You will also have some other important things for example, in this case in the course information we have a link for virtual meetings in the course. The other important thing that you can find a link to from your home page, the course home page, is the course schedule. And that's something you should also check, from the very first day of the course. Get an idea of when assignments are due, when you are going to have to participate in discussion forums, what sort of reading assignments you're going to have. In fact, the very first day you should go in there, check the schedule and also print it to keep it handy and be able to refer to it frequently. Now the content of a course is divided into what is commonly called modules or sometimes called units. In the example that I'm showing you today, the modules are organized with tabs across the top of the page. Sometimes the, the modules are organized either in the right or left column for example in this MOOC you find the modules in the left column of the course but the cont, one, the idea is the same. The course content is divided into sections or topics that are commonly called modules or units. When you open a module you will also find some common elements. Each module we'll have some sort of a brief description of what is the topic for that module. There will also be some sort of information from the instructor perhaps, a lecture perhaps, perhaps its called instructor commentary, but there will be some information from the instructor on what and the topic that you're studying in that module. Other common elements in any module of a course are discussion forums which you may have seen some of those in the coursera course, if you've joined any of those discussions, and there's also commonly a written assignment. Now your reading for the course is often found in the course information at the beginning of the course but it's also common to find links to information within the module or files that you can download. Each module and each course also usually has a link to some sort of online resources. These are additional resources that will help you with the course, or can help you in general as a student. You will notice in this example there are online resources within the module but also, from wherever you are in the course, at the top of the page you can find other resources and help, that are more general to the entire institution. Some courses may have exams or quizzes, and these are often taken also within your online course. Your instructor will give you more information on how to take those courses. But you would usually just go to your same course and there will be a link to your exam or your quiz. Different institutions do this differently you may work independently online, you may have to go to a proctored location. As international students, make sure your instructor knows you're an international student, you would most likely take the exam or quiz on your own. Let's talk for a minute also about synchronous meetings that I mentioned at the beginning. The synchronous meetings are something that you also might have trouble with as an international student. There are a number of different virtual meeting tools, and different institutions or different structures may learn different tools, so I can't tell you about all of those. But, if there are virtual meetings, once again, make sure your instructor knows that you are an international student, and if there are any time zone differences that will make it difficult for you to attend any virtual meetings, these could be virtual meetings in a face to face environment or it could be a specific time that your instructor has asked the students to be online for a synchronous chat so that everyone can discuss something at the same time. So once again, make sure your instructor knows that you are an international student, and especially if you have a large time difference if you are not going to be able to attend, what sort of alternate work you might be able to do. From within your course, you can also see your grades and there's usually a grade book attached to every course. Once again, this is something that's different depending upon the learning management system that you're in, but it's something you can note to look for is how to find the grades for your course. At the end of the course there's also a place online where students can find a summary of all of their grades for the term, not just the assignment by assignment grades that you can find within the course. As I said before, each learning management system, each institution does things a little bit differently, but all institutions do provide some sort of tutorial that you can review before you start taking the course. Please do that, taking the online tutorial will help you understand how the learning management system works at the institution you have chosen and will give you a better idea of what the expectations are for that course or for studying at that school, I hope this has been helpful.
