Starting in the Fall semester of 2003, Online IST 110, 210, and 250 will be offered through the World Campus as a cohort. This means that students will have an 'official' start and end date, and the course sections will run similar to resident sections of Online IST. This also means that students will be working in virtual teams to complete the overarching problem assignments. Teaming was a critical component to all Online IST courses that was missing through rolling enrollment sections of Online IST through the World Campus, but can now be included in cohort offerings.

The Solutions Institute is seeking individuals who would be interested in teaching Online IST courses through the World Campus following this new delivery model. If you are interested, please email Bart Pursel for more information.

Using the Syllabus Builder is the quickest and easiest way to get your students connected to your class information and the many resources the Solutions Institute provides. Just go to Edison Services from the Solutions Exchange and login with your PSU access account to get started.

Click the link below for an overview of the new Edison Services available Tuesday, August 19th 2003.

So what does this mean for you?

It means that visiting the IST Solutions Exchange is now a more rich, user-friendly experience. Combine this with the power of the tools being developed under the umbrella of Edison Services and you will see that the Exchange is a vastly improved asset for managing the Online IST experience.

Experience the new, improved IST Solutions Exchange 3.0 on Tuesday, August 19, 2003.

• Information Society and Policy
• Cognitive Information Processing
• Human Information Behavior
• Network Security

In addition, there will be many new discussion activities and two new problems. The first problem, Infinity Bank, will focus on banking technology innovation (much like Coastal Union), but will force students to make some different decisions based on more current issues like globalization, new types of physical locations in banking, internal and external training needs necessary to undertake online banking, and feasibility of online banking business models. The second problem will ask students to design the information technology and systems for the "Smart Car of the Future." The large focus is on the car's networks, databases, interfaces/usability, and overall policy/ethical/regulatory issues. This problem was tested with this summer's Pennsylvania Governor's School for IT students and will be revised based on student and instructor feedback.

Remember, however, that all problems (like Coastal Union, SonicJamz, etc.) are still available in the IST Solutions Exchange Problems Library -- so if you feel strongly about using a different problem, it will still be available. We think this will be a major step forward for IST 110 and will be looking for any feedback you can give us.

Once an instructor has built out a course section from within Edison Services, they will easily be able to manage student access to the application and create student team assignments through the use of online forms. In addition, once the students have submitted their evaluations, instructors will be able to view summary and detailed information about submitted evaluations, including compiled grades.

The self and team evaluation can be accessed through Edison Services.

With its tight integration with the new Online IST Syllabus Tool within Edison Services, students and faculty will have a streamlined access point to all course materials. The Syllabus is now actually part of the navigation structure of an Online IST course. The syllabus opens individual topics and the Interface provides all lesson and page level navigation from each screen -- this means using individual topics of an Online IST course much easier for faculty to do and less confusing to students.

You can begin to take advantage of the new interface by registering a section and building a syllabus with Edison Services on Tuesday, August 19th 2003. Also, keep in mind that if you like the Flash-based interface, it will still be available from the new syllabus. Follow the link below to view a sample Topic rendered in the new, Online IST Content Interface.