There’s a new woman in town and she’s taking online education by storm.
Carmen, the newest addition to the Technology Enhanced Learning and Research (TELR) family at Ohio State, debuted this summer. It offers students and teachers a variety of new features including: virtual chat and office hours, a personalized profile, as well as a preferences option that can change the format in which users view course e-mail or discussion pages.
“Carmen’s biggest advantage is that it’s easy for people to use,” said Joanne Dehoney, director of eLearning-TELR at OSU. “With WebCT, the usability characteristics were not as evident.”
Aside from being difficult to master, WebCT did not have “LOR,” Learning Objective Repository, which allows users to manage content from one central location, Dehoney said. Unlike WebCT, Carmen was built on international standards that lets users transfer information across course management systems world-wide. Carmen also has a mechanism that automatically converts to the newest version of Carmen at each log-in.
“Most of the advantages are behind the scenes,” Dehoney said. “Professors are able to build their course Web sites featuring discussion boards and content posting, all with ease.”
“Carmen seems to have more functionality, and you can do more things. It’s definitely more organized,” said Dezmon Landers, a junior in computer information systems.
“From a teacher’s perspective, I’m sure it is more organized for them, and there’s not so much downtime,” Landers said.
Leslie Jackson, a visiting assistant professor of evolution, ecology and organismal biology, said Carmen is useful for her large class.
“It’s easier to communicate with the class through announcements, as well as navigate through the site,” she said. “Overall it’s helpful for distributing information.”
“We have dramatically increased the professionalism of the system and have added adequate back-up service, so that if one server shuts down, users will not know since the system will still run,” Dehoney said.
Carmen will be upgraded at least once a year, but during times in which students generally are not utilizing the system. As was with WebCT, there will be ample warning of such down-times, according to the Carmen Help Team.
WebCT, OSU’s premiere Course Management System, has been a part of the OSU classroom since 1998 by providing countless syllabi, e-mails and other course materials. It will remain active until spring 2006 when Carmen, whose namesake is the alma mater “Carmen Ohio” will take over.
“Well you can generally do the same things with both, but with Carmen you can do more featured things like page the professor,” said Jennifer Moore, a senior in middle childhood education. “With WebCT, it was hard to get notes because the server was always down. With Carmen, it’s like each class has a unique homepage where the teacher can design it and post notes, as well as links with other sites to visit.”
In the future, Carmen will feature voice-over operations and Webcasting as perks to the system users.
For some students, the choice is not so clear cut.
“I don’t like either one, but if I have to choose it’d be Carmen,” said Jaqualia Williams, a junior in biology. “There’s too much stuff on both systems though.”
Dehoney said surveys indicate students are indifferent, as long as the system is stable and works during hours they need it.
“As we look towards the future of education, a system like Carmen is essential in communication with other universities and inter-departments,” she said.
