Campus Crossing Provides Tools for Creating Online Courses
Web Crossing Inc. (www.webcrossing.com) has streamlined and simplified the process of creating and maintaining online education courses with Campus Crossing 3.0, which provides tools for formulating complete online courses with many of the vital features of traditional in-person lessons. Striving to create online courses that are an improvement over traditional courses, Campus Crossing features discussion forums and a collaboration server that work across a variety of protocols, including the Web, e-mail or newsreader. Live discussions are also possible with Campus Crossing, allowing faculty to set fixed times for classes to participate in real-time discussions. These real-time events can feature frames for streaming video, slides and Web pages in addition to the frame of the live discussion.
Campus Crossing includes additional features for creating online course systems such as Course Builder, which allows educators to easily create courses and course modules, register students, as well as provides private areas for both teachers and students. Teachers can use the Examiner tool to create surveys and exams, while the Grade Book and Progress Tracker keep students and parents informed of deadlines, assignments, attendance and grades. In addition, the campus infrastructure is fully customizable and features an e-mail server with Web mail, POP3, IMAP and SMTP server. Version 3.0 also offers "Neurons," which are interactive multimedia databases with unlimited custom fields and views that are perfect for storing and sharing multimedia course materials, photo albums, member directories and much more.
This article originally appeared in the 03/01/2004 issue of THE Journal.