UW Online Environment Project Components and Terminology University of Waterloo -- Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Components of UWone

The UWone project will put in place a university-wide, stable, UW-specific online course activity environment based on an online learning model created at UW. During the evolution of the project acronyms and names have come and gone, and we have occasionally renamed various pieces. The project team has grown and more people are using the components for courses, so we need to have a terminology we can all use to address those components.

This document outlines the main components that make up UWone, and establishes a terminology. It is divided into those used globally, and others used primarily within the project team. For more information, see the Project Overview.

Global Terms

UWone: the project and the system

• UWone is the name of UW's online learning management system.
• UWone System Project is the name of the project to develop and deploy initial versions of UWone.

T5 model

• T5 is the name of the instructional design model UW has developed for online learning resources.
• T5 stands for Tasks, Tutoring (feedback), Topics (content), Tools, and Teamwork.
• The New Classroom series helps professors and course designers understand the T5 model, and how to apply it for their courses, whether online resources make up a small or large part of the course plan. The focus of the New Classroom series is the use of online resources for active learning tasks to optimize faculty-student interactions. Those interactions take place in traditional classroom, office, or lab settings, or in online formats.

Learning Task Designer (TD tool)

• The TD tool is the system the professor or course designer uses to create the course tasks structures and integrate tools and feedback into those tasks.

  [Previously, this had been called the "T5 Editor" but that became confusing when the model and the particular implementation in UWone had the same names.]

Learning Task Manager (TM tool) - term not commonly used!

• The TM tool is used by professors and students to manage their course tasks including viewing tasks, completing online tasks, submitting task assignments, giving and receiving feedback, etc.
• The TM tool integrates three previous components into one front end:
  • "view mode" of the Learning Task Designer,
  • the CM_T, course administration and activity tools developed by Distance Education,
  • vendor supported course tools (e.g. Angel and WebBoard).
• We don't use separate separate names for these three sub-systems because to the professors and students it appears as UWone.

Designer Wizard

• Implementation set for Fall 2003, the Designer Wizard is a new UWone course editor front end tool, written in Flash, that replaces much of the pre-Fall 2003 design components. It is much more usable, and integrates various funtionality into one interface.

Project Terms

• CM_Tool
  • The DE "homegrown" tool set. It includes course administration tools and various activity tools, incorporated into UWone. Tools include:
    • One-Minute Summary
    • Fill-in forms
    • Assignment upload
    • Assignment feedback
    • Announcements
• Vendor tools used for course activities:
  • ANGEL from CyberLearning Labs, provides a suite of activity tools, including online discussions, quizzes, chats, whiteboards, gradebook, etc. It is fully integrated into UWone.
  • WebBoard from Akiva provides an online discussion forum, not integrated into UWone. It will be phased out of online course use in favor or ANGEL's forum.

New interface: Course Mapper

• A new alternate interface for the TD and TM Tools is being developed which will display the course in terms of a timeline, emphasizing feedback for the instructor and student in terms of the status of various course activities. It was begun in Fall 2002 and development continues.

Maintained by Andrea Chappell, IST & LT3
Updated 9 July 2003