I came across an article the other day by the ProfHacker Community of The Wired Camps (part of the Chronicle of Higher Education) about using WordPress Course Management plugin to put course materials online.  While I do teach online courses, I am actually considering using this tool for my face-to-face classes where I have more authority and autonomy as an instructor.  In fact, I have already been playing around with putting my course content online even before this article went out – I am in the midst of teaching an ENGL 1102 Film As Literature course which I just shared syllabus details on my WordPress site.  Presently, my sharing of course materials are rudimentary at best and don’t really representing the sort-of changing state of my classroom environment, so I would be able to remove these sort of static pages and instead direct both students and random site visitors directly to my class “space.”

As I understand it, the WordPress course plugin includes built-in features for the syllabus and calendar or course schedules, but the individual course templates can be different than the overall template used for my own site. I am, however, still working through questions and considerations at the time – something that Roger’s diffusion theory scholars would recognize as the persuasion stage of the innovation decision process – since I need to take into consideration the existing platform used at my institution, the technology skill of my students, and how this external and public display of course materials will impact the flow of my classroom.  In a sense, it seems to be productive in not only providing course materials to students but in also creating a sort of authentic ‘teaching portfolio’ that is not just a representation of what you have done but a physical reality of your pedagogy in action.