Teaching Software Engineering and Computer Science Online Using Recent Instructional Technology

Higher education is fast becoming a very competitive market with the plethora of universities offering online degrees increasing across the country.Our university has been offering distance education in various forms since the 90s.But the courses we could offer using distance technology of the 90s were limited due to the nature of our contentcomputer science and software engineering courses typically have technology requirements that could not be supported at that time.Now with high-speed internet connections and new technologies, we are no longer restricted by our content.Besides the availability of new technologies, there may also be pedagogical reasons to consider adding online components into student learning, according to some studies.This paper will address learning content management systems and classroom tools used to facilitate online courses.Specifically, we will discuss the various tools and techniques we have used and incorporated in the development and delivery/teaching of courses in the School of Computing and Software Engineering.For development SmoothDraw, Camtasia, Tablet PCs, and Blackboard/Vista, will be examined.We'll explore the use of Echo360, wall-mounted cameras, Wimba, SmartBoard and tablet PCs for delivery.For content management we'll explore Blackboard's Vista and Sakai-Globule.