RE: [Proposal] schema:OnlineCourse

+1 Phil’s approach to separating the concept of Course and an instance of a Course, sometimes called a “Course Section.”  

Students enroll in a Course Section, and instructors are assigned to a Course Section.  The Course Section might them be scheduled as one or more events, if it is designed for synchronous learning, or it might just require a begin and end date for the window in which the Course Section is offered/available for students to progress at their own pace.  Course content, such as a video may be used across all Sections of a course, but there may be section content developed for or by participants in the specific Section.  Likewise, the content coverage and general learning expectations would be defined as part of the “Course" design, allowing for variations in delivery by different instructors teaching different Sections.

Here are entity definitions from Common Education Data Standards (CEDS)  (which was informed by pre-existing standards)…

Course—     The organization of subject matter and related learning experiences provided for the instruction of students on a regular or systematic basis…
Course Section—     An instance in which organized instruction of course content is provided to one or more students for a given period of time. 

        
Re: Online as subtype: CEDS also has a “Virtual Indicator” to flag a Course Section as one that is delivered online, and a vocabulary for blended learning models.

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