CourseForum for Windows

Web-based e-learning software

Online learning is growing increasingly popular amongst both students and institutions and CourseForum is designed to allow educators to draw-up their own online learning courses.

CourseForum is designed at creating a forum of debate around subjects studied and in the developer's own words, about "creating, sharing and talking about ideas, Q&A, course notes, research, student portfolios, project work, and more".

You can setup up a project very quickly with CourseForum. A setup wizard takes you through all the initial steps you need to get going. Everything is done within your web browser meaning that students don't need to use a third party application. They can access the course simple from a web address that you provide although you can setup your own server if you want. There are separate wizards depending on whether you want to setup or devise a group project, lesson plan or individual student project.

Tracking of students is made as easy as possible via an online tracking tool per unit completed. However, although initial setup of CourseForum is straightforward, administration and especially switching to your own server (although not essential) may be quite intimidating for beginners.

CourseForum is an interesting online learning tool that has something for both students and educators.

* User Interface Enhancements: o redesigned bottom area of forum pages, introducing more icons for commands, improved consistency in fonts and layout, etc. o new and improved look for administration pages, including new tab navigation for switching between sections, adjusting fonts in forms and data tables, adjusting page titles, exit links, etc. o made clearer when signed in as different levels of administrator, and added new options to allow sign out from different admin levels from all view pages and all administration pages; improved consistency in use of "sign in" and "sign out" (vs. "login/logout") o updated look in auxilliary pages (versions, track changes, sign in, etc.) to match updated administration pages * New Theme Editor and Customization Options: o new theme editor allows for simpler customizations of selected colors and logos in base themes for easier branding; themes can now be explicitly derived from one of the built-in base themes o added 'extra.css' hook in themes, providing a way to more easily override styles in base themes but still accommodating future changes in base themes o added many more 'hooks' for customizing different aspects of forum pages via CSS o removed 'postsize' variable in themes, and instead use CSS to determine size of comments area * Additional Wiki Markup: o new markup for in-page footnotes o new markup to allow page links to be displayed as images via [page:"name" image:id/url] o added page redirects, via placing [redirect:..] as first thing in page * Bug Fixes and Other Changes: o new option to allow setting default forum activity log setting in site administration o new option to decide if forums start out open or closed in Campus version o in WYSIWYG editor, text typed immediately before or after a link bracket (in blue) could sometimes be removed when saving o fixed bug where changing type of a file link in the WYSIWYG editor could result in the new type being deleted on save

Changes

• * User Interface Enhancements: o redesigned bottom area of forum pages, introducing more icons for commands, improved consistency in fonts and layout, etc. o new and improved look for administration pages, including new tab navigation for switching between sections, adjusting fonts in forms and data tables, adjusting page titles, exit links, etc. o made clearer when signed in as different levels of administrator, and added new options to allow sign out from different admin levels from all view pages and all administration pages; improved consistency in use of "sign in" and "sign out" (vs. "login/logout") o updated look in auxilliary pages (versions, track changes, sign in, etc.) to match updated administration pages * New Theme Editor and Customization Options: o new theme editor allows for simpler customizations of selected colors and logos in base themes for easier branding; themes can now be explicitly derived from one of the built-in base themes o added 'extra.css' hook in themes, providing a way to more easily override styles in base themes but still accommodating future changes in base themes o added many more 'hooks' for customizing different aspects of forum pages via CSS o removed 'postsize' variable in themes, and instead use CSS to determine size of comments area * Additional Wiki Markup: o new markup for in-page footnotes o new markup to allow page links to be displayed as images via [page:"name" image:id/url] o added page redirects, via placing [redirect:..] as first thing in page * Bug Fixes and Other Changes: o new option to allow setting default forum activity log setting in site administration o new option to decide if forums start out open or closed in Campus version o in WYSIWYG editor, text typed immediately before or after a link bracket (in blue) could sometimes be removed when saving o fixed bug where changing type of a file link in the WYSIWYG editor could result in the new type being deleted on save