The University of Wyoming offers and suggests various online teaching facilities.

Websites in general for courses-- Where can I get a website for my class or research group?

WyoWeb, the University of Wyoming portal, provides some services for faculty and students:  WyoWeb Facilities For the Paperwork of Teaching.

A course website, provided by a course platform or LMS (Learning Management System), is a web service private to class members, including students, instructors, and TAs, for posting teaching materials and conducting learning activities, with standard tools for teaching tasks. In addition to materials distribution, such tasks typically include assignment submission, quiz administration, online discussion, grade display and computation, and so forth.  Instructors and students both reach the course website with a web browser, e.g., Internet Explorer or Firefox. 

Two platforms are available at UW for course websites to be used as supplements to classroom teaching.

1. Course Studio in WyoWeb-- file sharing and communications
2. eCompanion-- file sharing and communications, plus structured units of materials, document sharing, exams, student work submission, and other standard tools

Each course platform operates in a different administrative scenario, which generally does not affect instructors. Course Studio membership is derived directly from official registration records.  ECompanion students have accounts automatically created, then the students are added to course websites in accordance with their class registration. If you decide to use a course website, consider the following:

• Do you want to use the simple choice, Course Studio?  See Course Studio Quick Start and the comprehensive "Instructions for Standard Teaching Tasks in Course Studio" on the Supplemental Course Websites page.  Please read the "Limitations and Troubleshooting" section.
• Do you want to use a full-blown course platform, i.e., eCompanion?  Read the Supplemental Course Websites page and submit the eCompanion Course Request form (on the upper right).  For how-to guidance, come to the Introduction to Course Websites workshop and peruse the online manual, "Instructions for Standard Teaching Tasks in eCompanion."

Pedagogical planning fosters successful use of course websites (and other instructional technology). Consider what you want your students to do in the course site.  Please feel free to consult with us on the best applications of technology.  Our mapping worksheet may help.

Your online materials may be standard document types, such as Microsoft Word or PDF files.  (You may also write, or save, materials in HTML, the underlying language of the web.)  In addition to documents, full-blown online course platforms provide many other special materials, activities, and tools, such as exams that your students can take online, assignment submission, blogs and wikis, threaded discussion forums, and so forth.

Connection from WyoWeb to course sites:  The "My Courses" channel in WyoWeb, under the Course Sites link, lists all courses, by term, for which you are the instructor of record.  Each course title link points to either a "No Course Website" information page, or the Course Studio site, or an eCompanion site.  This link reference can be changed with the EDIT button (the gray pad to the left of the title), but is also subject to automatic change when an eCompanion course request is fulfilled.  We can help with the details of specific scenarios.

Please maintain all of your course materials on your own systems.  A course website is just a temporary carrier.

Last update: 13 May 2013; RKH