MCA-255
e-Content Development
Building courses rather than software — instructional design, content development standards, CMS and LMS platforms, multimedia authoring, and MOOCs.
- Semester
- Semester 3
- Credits
- 3
- Scheme
- 3 lectures a week
- Contact hours
- 40 across four units
- Category
- Open Elective - II
What the paper is
e-Content Development is the open elective for people who will end up teaching, training or producing learning material. It treats a course as an engineered artefact with a design process, standards to comply with, and a platform to deploy on.
Unit I is instructional design — theories and models, concept mapping, storyboards, scripting, and the content development standards that make a course portable between platforms. Unit II is the platform itself: CMS versus LMS, and working on an open-source system such as Moodle.
The paper is explicitly practical. Each of the last three units carries a stated exercise — working on Moodle, designing two hours of e-content with all components, and completing a two-week online course — and the exam expects you to have done them.
What to concentrate on
- The distinction between a CMS and an LMS is the most asked question in the paper. Be able to state it precisely and to say which you would choose for a described requirement.
- Know the stages of content development in order — analysis, design, storyboard, development, deployment, evaluation — because it is the structure most long answers should follow.
- For Unit III, be ready to justify media choices: when video earns its cost over text, when an interactive component is worth building, what makes an online assessment valid. Reasoned answers score better than lists here.
Syllabus, unit by unit
Summarised from the approved scheme. Hours are the contact hours the scheme allots, which is a fair guide to where the marks sit.
Unit I · e-Learning and instructional design
10 hours- Stages and categories of e-learning; technologies and infrastructure
- Instructional design: theory and models; concept mapping
- Stages of content development, storyboards, scripting technologies
- Content authoring and publishing; content development standards and models; developing standard-compliant content
Unit II · Content management systems
10 hours- Basics of CMS and LMS and the difference between them
- Features and requirements of a CMS
- Development and customisation of an open-source LMS; open source versus closed source
- Development and deployment of e-content through an LMS, with practical work on a system such as Moodle
Unit III · Designing e-content
10 hours- Learning with media; content authoring and publishing tools
- Multimedia-based e-content: graphics and animation, online video creation, audio and podcasting
- Design of online assessments and activities
- Design and development of interactive components and of mobile learning components
- Practical: designing two hours of e-content with all components
Unit IV · Trends and advancements
10 hours- Virtual classroom based content delivery
- MOOCs and MOOC-based content delivery
- Mobile content; personalised and adaptive e-content
- Professional ethics in content usage, development and writing
How it is examined
- Question 1 is compulsory, covers the whole syllabus, and is made of objective or short-answer questions. It carries 12 marks.
- The rest of the paper is four units matching the four above. Each unit sets two questions and you attempt one, so there are four more answers at 12 marks each.
- Examiners are asked to map every question to a course outcome using Bloom's taxonomy, which is why questions are phrased as “apply”, “analyse” or “evaluate” rather than only “explain”.
The pass mark is 40 out of 100 in every paper.
Learning objectives
- Developing e-content in a creative and standardised way
- Designing e-content with multimedia features such as audio, video and animation
- Deploying content on a content management system
- Using authoring and publishing tools for content design and presentation
- Becoming a professional e-content designer
Assumed beforehand
- Knowledge of computers and presentation tools
- Knowledge of audio and video tools and presentation software
- Having attended or participated in an online course
Books it is taught from
- TB1Diane Elkins et al., “E-Learning Fundamentals: A Practical Guide”, 2015
- TB2Nirav Mehta, “Choosing an Open Source CMS: Beginner's Guide”, 2010
- TB3Marina Arshavskiy, “Instructional Design for e-Learning”, 2nd edition, 2018
Notes for MCA-255
Lecture notes, question papers and assignments filed against MCA-255 are in the library. Everything there has been checked by a moderator before it appears, and an account is free — new ones are approved by hand, which is what keeps the shelf clean.