Significance

As in all types of lectures, preparing the lecture notes is a very important activity: the notes substantiate and complement the contents of the course. In an electronic, web based course, the importance of the lecture notes is even more important, as, at least in theory, they constitute the only content that the students will receive. These notes must thus be carefully prepared and their content must be structured to ensure the effectiveness of each lesson. The purpose of the present text is to define and substantiate the structure of the course and the way the course material will be prepared. This document itself was prepared using the very tools and structure that will be used for the preparation of the course itself, with the aim to provide a concrete demonstration of the concepts in action and to offer a concrete example of the way the material needs to be prepared to fit into the intended course structure.

Structure of the course

The structure of the course has been discussed at many occasions within the project team, and within sub-groups of the project team. Figure 1 shows the structure of the online course: based on the “walk through structural types” approach, it is structured as a series of lessons that each constitutes an independent learning unit. This structure appears to be very classical, but there is a very important difference here: the “walking” approach means that all lessons must be taken in a strictly consecutive order. The course is structured as a linear structure! This means that the first lessons constitute the foundations of the course, while subsequent lessons construct the matter, which is then covered by the final material.

Figure 1: Structure of the on-line course (from left to right)