CHAPTER 4 Developing Infrastructure for Online Learning

Introduction
Online learning is now becoming ubiquitous at all levels of education in all institutions of learning. All educational endeavors are systems, made up of various interconnected components. The ideal online learning and teaching system is one that is developed from scratch, without restriction on costs and staffing, and uninhibited by resistance to change from previous practices. A real system is one where any or all of the following deviations from the ideal occur

Basic thinking
All teaching and learning systems should be built on two foundations. 1. The needs of the intended students 2. The learning outcomes of the course or program. A program, or a training event of any kind is useful in many ways. Closely related to these two foundations is the size and scalability of the online learning system.

Overall Structure and Organization

Overall structure and organization is framework that shows the organization of the various components of the composed system The first is the relationship between academic and administrative computing that is information technology functions should be connected or not. The second and related issue is that of centralization / decentralization of control.

Online learning system framework.

The Components of an Online Learning System

The development of a courseware The learning management system Library and digital resources Learner services Interface with the student information system The user portal Quality assessment