ClassLeader - Software Overview

e-teaching software by instructors for instructors

ClassLeader aims at making it possible for anyone to design, create and run distance learning, e-teaching & e-learning programs. We believe that to accomplish this there must be a collective and personalized dialogue between the trainer, instructor or teacher and learners or students. To understand how this works select one of the following topics or scroll down:

	ClassLeader's Philosophy
	What ClassLeader Contains
	Tools for trainers
	Tools and Outlook for Learners
	Administrators Functions
	Managing the Data
	A tool for flexibility & Creativity

ClassLeader's Philosophy

ClassLeader is designed to work with any educational or training approach that is built on the notion of a continuous structured but open-ended dialogue between the instructor, teacher or trainer or learner in an online or distance environment. It is obvious that this premise is very different from that of traditional online or distance learning techniques, with its broadcast model of teaching aiming at distilling packaged knowledge to the uninstructed or ignorant. But it is worthwhile remembering that the tradition of a constructive educational (pedagogic) dialogue dates back at least to Socrates!

A model of educational or instructive design particularly well adapted to a tool such as ClassLeader is Constructivism, a philosophy of learning that draws on many traditions, such as pragmatism and the Piaget theories of cognitive evolution.

We believe that learning is an active process that must be co-managed by the instructor, teacher or trainer and the learner or student through a pragmatic partnership that lasts for a fixed period of time and aims at attaining some defined objectives. The fundamental issues that both must face are:

	the usually complex nature of the aims,
	the location and exploitation of resources,
	the timing of learning events
	the logic of course structuring,
	the expression and sharing knowledge and understanding.

With most online techniques the instructor, trainer or teacher controlled all of these things. With Classleader the exercise of structuring and expression is shared and the learner or student is given more scope to develop complex skills. This is what is done in real class or training environments.

What ClassLeader contains

	Server-side software ensuring personalized & collective programming & monitoring
	Creation & management of course data (courses, lessons, announcements)
	A personal communication system with messaging linked to lessons and tasks,
	An electronic classroom managed by the trainer & a thematic forum for each course,
	A quiz & exercise authoring system,
	Programming & management of multimedia resources installed on the learners' stations,
	Automatic FTP uploads,
	Access to three levels: administrator, trainer, learner,
	Quick creation of course structures and lesson contents,
	The association of any HTML page with a course, a lesson, an exercise or communication.
	Internet or Intranet access,
	Courses built & managed essentially by filling in forms
	Forms include & upload the URL or local address of external resources and multimedia
	Interconnected databases that consolidate both individual and collective data

Tools for trainers

ClassLeader puts the trainer, teacher or educator at the center of the decision-making process by simplifying the teaching role while at the same time expanding the trainer's range of actions. Once the system is set up, the trainer teacher or educator can concentrate on training, i.e. managing the ongoing learning process. The system gives the power to the trainer teacher or educator to organize events and work plans, respond to the needs of the learners and provide various forms of assistance.

The trainer, teacher or educator is the course "leader" who orientates, communicates, organizes, supervises, evaluates, initiates and monitors projects and selects appropriate documents. Some trainers may, in addition to these basic training responsibilities, use the system to assemble courseware from documentary databases and others may choose to use the ClassLeader platform as a stage to display their authoring skills. The systemic logic of ClassLeader makes long term knowledge management a flexible reality within the training context.

The trainer, teacher or instructor fulfills several complementary roles: designer of the training strategy, builder of the course, communicator of information to the learners, personal guide to each of the learners or students, moderator of the electronic classroom sessions and evaluator of the work accomplished by each learner. Most of these functions are directly accessible from the Control Panel.

Title	Function	Action
Add course	Create a new course or modify an existing one	Give the course a title and identify it in the database
Enroll learner	Enroll the learners	Can be done by either the administrator or trainer by filling in the form
Add lesson	Create a series of numbered lessons in the course	Identify the lesson with a number and text and type the addresses of links to other pages, sites or applications
Announcement	Announce the program and all other useful information to the learners.	Type the information and addresses of links
Learner-trainer Interaction	Communicate with each individual learner	Use message form to give assignments, reply to or ask questions and define projects. Indicate links
Notes	React to the learners' work and messages	The trainer can store and re-use as well as personalize standard messages in a database
Upload	Send documents or pages to the server for use by learners	Identify the resource (from a distant or local source) and click on a button to store it. The learner clicks on an automatically generated link to access it.
Exercise	Create any new course elements required (exercises, tests)	Using standard forms for question and answer exercises based on text and multimedia (links)
Electronic Classroom	Organize and host sessions that bring the group of learners together	Announce the time and date, prepare associated documents and host the session

Tools & outlook for learners

The learner or student is the active partner, the very opposite of the passive spectator or consumer of the traditional online or distance learning system. Learning is a project that is conducted by the learner or student whose starting point is the advice, program and guidance given by the trainer, teacher or instructor through a variety of means.

The learner's or student's role can be characterized in the following way:

		Student: someone who studies the documents associated with the course.
		Conversationalist: someone who uses basic dialogue skills together with the trainer and other learners to deepen and refine understanding.
		Correspondent: a learner who uses written messages to describe study, work and projects and to ask and answer questions.
		Decision-maker: someone who is constantly making decisions to define personal interest or fulfill the changing needs of a project.
		Team member: someone who works with other learners to accomplish common goals while pursuing one's own individual goal.
		Team leader: someone who will take charge of certain projects or communication sessions to organize and execute work.
		Author: someone who can create and publish texts and documents on the subject studied.
		Actor: someone who can participate in role plays or simulations
		Presenter: someone who can be called upon to give a formal presentation of an aspect of the work or a project.

According to the discipline, some learners may also be artists or musicians. ClassLeader makes it possible to acquire a rich experience of the subject matter and prepare truly professional activities, working on behavior as well as knowledge.

Using the same interface as the trainer, work takes place through the key functions of ClassLeader.

Title	Function	Action
Control panel	Gives access to the course structure and a wide range of functions	The learner clicks on the appropriate function in the Control Panel and navigates freely
Learner-trainer Interaction	Messaging	Inside a lesson the learner can communicate and interact with the trainer concerning the theme and the assignments
Forum	Debate amongst learners	The learner fills in text form and can create links to associate documents or multimedia objects.
Exercises	Tests and exercises (text and multimedia) prepared by the trainer	The learner freely accesses this part of a lesson or work phase prepared by the trainer and answers the questions, whose results are stored on the server.
Your dictionary	A personal and group (shared) dictionary for the course	Each learner can create items for both a personal and collective dictionary or glossary, ultimately managed by the trainer.
Electronic classroom	Full meetings of the group under the trainer's guidance	The learner enters the classroom from the course and is automatically recognized as a participant in the session.

Administrators Functions

The administrator is responsible for managing the learning sites, creating the groups and authorizing the trainers and learners who are enrolled. More generally, it is the administrator who is in charge of the educational framework of an institution using ClassLeader. The administrator may also be the individual instructor, trainer or teacher who may provide for the major functions which include but are not limited to:

		The organization, character and specific functionality of sites
		The creation of sub-sites
		Enrollment procedures and enrollment itself
		Controlling access
		Managing the courses and providing appropriate template or framework needed
		Parametrizing the courses according to the needs of the trainers
		Reacting to special requirements of trainers
		Managing payment and reporting systems.

ADMINISTRATOR

Training Functions	Means	Benefits of ClassLeader
Constitution of groups	Forms to fill in	General administration freeing the trainer of that responsibility
Authorization of trainers & learners	Forms and keys to attribute	Centralized data and transactional security
Creation of sites	Forms to fill in	Easy organization of groups of courses
Formatting of sites to trainer specifications	Table of course structure (page attributes) and parameters	Preparation of customized course environments for each trainer
Management of security	Use of keys	Flexible system

Managing the Data

Every event, including the transcriptions of electronic class sessions, is recorded and stored for future consultation by learner and trainer alike, making it possible to monitor and adjust teaching strategies.

Learners can take notes and store them as well as create their own glossary or terms and share it with the group. The names of the members of a group are associated with their e-mail addresses facilitating communication among learners working on the same themes or taking the same class.

A Tool for flexibility & Creativity

Online education should be structured but flexible. ClassLeader supplies the ideal context, simple but powerful, for creating this environment for all education and training purposes.

The basic steps of taken by a trainer, teacher or instructor:

		Create the new course (give it a title and identify it in the database).
		Enroll the learners (who can request to join a course but must be approved by trainer and administrator).
		Create at least one lesson in the course with text and the possibility of links to other pages or applications.
		Announce the program and all other useful information to the learners.
		Communicate with each learner by giving assignments and defining projects.
		React to the learners' work and messages: the trainer can store and re-use as well as personalize standard messages in a database.
		Create any new course elements required (lessons, exercises, assignments) to stimulate the learners' effort or to react to submitted work .
		Organize electronic classroom sessions in order to bring a group of learners together around specific themes and documents.

To discover how this is done try the ClassLeader Product Tour or one of the sessions in the Our Free Classes section.