Email eLearning– Using Email as a Course Management System

For dis­tance edu­ca­tion, online course mange­ment sys­tems are often appro­pri­ately used to facil­i­tate dis­cus­sions and other activ­i­ties asso­ci­ated with the instruc­tional process. Course man­age­ment sys­tems are also often used to add an online com­po­nent to face-to-face instruc­tional expe­ri­ences. Some of the oft-used fea­tures in this type of a blended/hybrid learn­ing set­ting include dis­cus­sion board, file sharing/storage and the send­ing out of announcements.

Often, a sim­ple email dis­cus­sion list could just as well pro­vide at least the same func­tion­al­ity of the fea­tures men­tioned above with­out requir­ing the learner to become famil­iar with a new a course man­age­ment sys­tem. Here are some ideas on how to take full advan­tage of an exist­ing tech­nol­ogy (email) that every­one is famil­iar with to encour­age learn­ing, espe­cially blended learn­ing sit­u­a­tions. The term dis­cus­sion list is being used with the same mean­ing as a listserv.

1. Announce­ments This one is obvi­ous, if an instruc­tor needs to let stu­dents know about some­thing he or she sim­ply send out an email to the list­serv and it auto­mat­i­cally goes to everyone’s inbox. (Hope­fully there isn’t any­one out there using a CMS sim­ply for the pur­pose of emails other students).
2. Dis­cus­sions This seems to be a com­mon fea­ture for instruc­tors who desire to add an online com­po­nent to their face-to-face teach­ing sit­u­a­tion. Using a CMS you log in, browse to the dis­cus­sion sec­tion, find what­ever thread you are look­ing for and then read and post. Using a list­serv the dis­cus­sion arrives in your inbox and you click reply when you want to respond to a dis­cus­sion thread– easy. Small group dis­cus­sions would also be pos­si­ble although it would require a sec­ond dis­cus­sion list to be set up.
3. File stor­age and shar­ing As long as the nature of an assign­ment allows it to be shared by the group then it can be sent as an attach­ment where oth­ers in the group can read and com­ment (and grade) and the attach­ment is then auto­mat­i­cally archived. Dis­cus­sion list archives can be pub­lic or private.

Another advan­tage of using a dis­cus­sion list where pos­si­ble is that under­stand­ing and being able to use such lists effec­tively is a great way to pro­mote future pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment in rel­e­vant dis­cus­sion lists.

More Read­ing…

Syl­labus of an entire course on Using Email in Instruc­tion
Email games from Thiagi.com