What are the criteria for a good online course?

This is our coursework draft: GDocs

1. The e-course has to be practical.

Practical means that the length of the course is sufficient, the course enables you to become more efficient in the field of study and gain from the knowledge. The course should take up time as much as it would not disturb one's private life. Besides being practical, the course also needs to have academic quality. There is a need for the course and the need persists because of its good quality.

2. The e-course needs to be free.

By providing it free, there will be more people who are interested in taking the course, thus taking more interest in the subject and perhaps gaining from it. Free e-courses should also provide a certificate in order to be able to add it to one's CV. Our group members also provided an option to be able to get paid from learning from the course, but I think this is more the job of you boss to provide you with necessary funding.

3. The content of the course needs to be consistent.

Content includes several interesting and emotionally attractive topics to various people. The course has to be inspiring, and provide with lots of interesting ideas and new thoughts. With a rich content of written examples and added images the content proves to be simple to understand, and easy to grasp. The content needs to be changeable in order to be consistent with the current topics and future improvements.

4. Usability of the course has to meet its users' needs.

The course is built on a platform that enables simple design and easy access. Design of the course is simple with easy-to-use interface and well-built commands. The course is well-structured and consistent. The course is as attractive as it is interactive. The less clicks the better.

Preferably, the course includes many languages and also the native languages of the users.

3. Performance is vivid.

The course can be found via search engines, and it includes an RSS-feed in order to be tracked. Preferably it is integrated to many social network platforms (facebook/twitter) in order to be seen through the updates and feedback. There are no special hard- or software criterias needed while taking the course, everything should be built-in. 

7. The environment of the e-course should meet the needs of the users.

There is a possibility to choose between one environment/platform or multiple environments.

When one is chosen, then there are various means used, like blogs, wikis, e-conference tools, instant messaging tools or chatrooms, webpages, etc. They have to be simply built up and quickly modified. The users need to grasp the instructions "from thin air" without starting to work through thick manuals which teach how to use the environments.

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