This week’s assignment deals with open courseware. The course which I am evaluating is from MIT and the course is communication for managers. The course is described as writing and speaking skills necessary for a career in management. Students polish communication strategies and methods through discussion, examples, and practice. Several written and oral assignments most based on material from other subjects and from career development activities (Hartman, 2002). From our reading material for this week and watching the video resources from Dr .George Piskurich, The planning and designing phase of online courses are very important to the overall success of the course. According to Dr. George Piskurich, there are two things needed when developing an online course. The two things are a story board which maps out the flow and a site map which shows the students how to move through the course. The course from MIT is similar to our course outline with Walden. There are six categories which one can navigate through this course. These six are course home, syllabus, calendar, reading, lecture notes and assignments. The syllabus gives further insight into the course as it relates to course meeting times, course objectives, text and material and grading of course assignment. It is clear the course is designed with the distance student in mind. The instructional environment should be viewed as a system, a relationship among all the components of that system---the instructor, the learners, the material, and the technology. Especially when planning for distance education, the instructor must make decisions that will affect all aspects of the system (Moore & Kearsley, 2005). As we look at each reading, there are lecture notes associated that the students can download and keep as their own material. This is a clear indication that the course is designed with the online student in mind because we are students that are in different time zones and different work schedules and this makes it easier for us to access material available for the class. In our text book there are fundamental of teaching online. Some examples of the fundamentals are stated purpose of the assignment, examples of acceptable and unacceptable topics, grading criteria, including areas of special emphasis due dates, point values, instructions for submitting the assignments such as in the CMS drop-box or as an e-mail attachment sent directly to the instructor ( Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, Zvacek, 2012). The MIT course gives instruction about when the assignments are due. It also reminds the students of key dates for certain parts of their presentations. The course describes how the students are to participate in their oral presentation. It gives the procedure to the students. All of which is listed in the syllabus. Overall, this course is a great example of what we have learned this week. It demonstrates the hard work of the instructional designer which includes the planning and designing of this website. The course shell which includes CMS, LMS, WIKI or HTML is also part of this course. The course is using a CMS such as blackboard. The alpha test and beta test for this course has been applied because the course is very well put together and thought out. http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/sloan-school-of-management/15-280-communication-for-managers-fall-2008/syllabus/ Piskurich G. (n.d.). Planning and Designing Online Course. Multimedia Resources. Laureate Education Piskurich Simonson G. (n.d.). Developing Online Course. Multimedia Resources. Laureate Education. M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (5th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearsonch