CourseForum, a company that makes interactive learning software, has introduced CourseForum 1.0, a Web-based, Mac OS X compatible discussion and collaboration software that’s designed for educators.
CourseForum allows instructors and their students to host discussions and share knowledge. The software can be used to share, and talk about ideas, Q&A, research, student portfolios, project work and more. Instructors and students use the software through a normal Web browser.
Each CourseForum page can not only hold a discussion on a specific topic, but also a set of questions and answers, links to supplementary course material or research, a student’s note-taking from a lecture, student portfolios and more.
In CourseForum, teachers and their students choose what to post, what to share, what to discuss and how to organize it all. New pages can be created for new topics. Each page is fully editable by everyone, right from the browser. You don’t need special tools or knowledge of markup languages like HTML, according to the folks at CourseForum.
Individual pages (or the entire course) can be locked down to prevent changes. And all changes are recorded, so that you know exactly who added what. You can track participation in your classes, seeing who is contributing and who is not and you can add links that help you organize and relate information and discussions to each other.
Pricing starts at US$99. A time-limited demo version is available at the CourseForum Web site.