Online Training DB
Attn: Shawn P. Beighle, Director of Information Technology
International Republican Institute
[email protected]
1225 Eye Street, NW Suite 700
Washington
20005
IRI would like to capitalize on its recent purchase of video production equipment by means of creating a website called www.democracy-u.org where we can post on-demand style
training sessions for anyone to access. As this is a new innovative for IRI, we will rely heavily on whatever vendor is chosen to provide suggestions on how best to accomplish the goals of the site itself.
With that said, we do have some ideas about the functionality and design of the site to get things started.
Concepts
Potential students must create an account in order to access any of the training sessions. In doing so, we should also be able to collect information on the student. Examples of the information that we would like to collect:
*Full Name
*Full Mailing Address
*Phone number
*Email address
*Age
*(Optional) Race
*Highest level of school completed
*Survey Questions:
o Have you ever enrolled in virtual training before?
o How did you hear about www.democracy-u.org?
o How many friends do you know that has or will enroll for membership to www.democracy-u.org?
*People must create an account. In doing so, they will get an
Email account (25MB) for communicating with other students and their instructor. User account should be their democracy-u email address.
*When a student registers, an Email should be sent out to a
non-democracy-u.org Email account that they must then reply to in order to \"activate\" their account.
*Each student must register for each course that they wish to
participate in.
*We should be able to track the status of each student...what
courses they signed up for, their progress in that course, discussion topics that they opened and/or contributed to, average time on the site, how long it took them to complete courses.
*Would also like to be automatically notified when a student
completes a course, so that we can send them a certificate of
completion.
*Our intent is to record training sessions in the large
conference room, then stream the video and put it on democracy-u. Of course any training materials (PowerPoint\'s, manuals, documents, etc) will also be available for download. Once the training session has been posted, we would then open up a message board specifically for that training session for students to communicate with the trainer. IRI will require that the trainer monitor and interact with the board for a full week after the training session. Then, the session would be transferred to an \"Archives\" section of the site so that it can be viewed by anyone
at later times.
*A real curriculum must be developed for each course. We want to have online quizzes and exams that students must pass to graduate the course. IRI will in turn give a certificate of completion to that student.
*We want to be able to track student\'s progress, but the student should also be able to track their progress...grades in previous courses, etc.
*The instructor must have the ability to post announcements.
*A forum should be active for each course, so that students can talk about assignments, post their homework for other students to see, etc.
*The instructor should be able to open live chat sessions to
interact with students.
*We should have the ability to create workspaces for group
assignments.
*There should be profiles for each student and instructor.
*There should be a reference library where students and/or
instructors can upload research materials
*Should factor in to the build of the website that many of the
students may be accessing via a dial-up connection to the Internet.
*Upload assignments as Word, PowerPoint, PDF
*Would like to have live chatting capabilities, but would want to
leave it turned off.
Theory
*Intensity - In theory, each class should be a short and intense
virtual classroom experience with a steep learning curve.
*Participation - All students should be reading other students
assignments and posting comments on those assignments in the forum.
*Sharing - The students in these courses are all seasoned
professionals with extensive experience. When working properly, students
should learn more from each other than from the instructor.
*Networking - At its peak, the course would provide the basis for
a network of professionals sharing their experiences and lessons learned
in a systematic way, such as a weekly group email.
