First Class Basic Features

Course Schedule

Week 1:

Meet Your Communication Tools Participants become acquainted with each other and the basic communication techniques of email.

Week 2:

Communicate and Collaborate This week introduces the methods of successful groupware collaboration methods, and the methods of sharing data among group members via conferences.

Week 3:

Master Scheduling Yourself and Your Colleagues Participants learn about the use of group calendars, scheduling and reminders, scheduling the time of others, and controlling the reservations of business resources.

Week 4:

Prepare for Your New Online Community Participants learn how to use their new knowledge of FirstClass' tools to collaborate with both their institution's community and those of the world beyond.

Sample Lesson

View a sample lesson (Acrobat Reader Required, PDF format, 176 K)

What graduates are saying about FirstClass Basic Features. . .

I didn't understand the big picture of the learning process until I went through this course.

This course helped me learn alongside my colleagues, techies and novices, so we all went through it together, without feeling stupid.

This course taught me how important it is to have a plan for how we approach a big technological change.

I would have never advanced beyond the the bare basics myself, and now I have the confidence to use the software well.

Course Details

FirstClass Basic Features is a four-week intensive online workshop that teaches your institution how to embrace the new technology you've chosen, create a plan for how you'll use the new collaboration tools for both staff and your contacts afar, and how to skip the stage of slow, unsure experimentation, instead learning the best of what FirstClass has to offer.

Our course focuses on online discussion groups to master the concepts of collaboration, communicating with other staff members with the very features they'll use to conduct their business. We use a wide repertoire of strategies that cause our online courses to successfully allow effective collaboration. Our participants learn through cooperative knowledge sharing and a depth of dialogue that promotes full understanding of the topics.

The course is scheduled and asynchronous, which means that staff can interact with the course and their colleagues whenever convenient, but all staff are participating in the activities of the same lessons within the same week. This is not a self-paced course.

Participants learn to...

• Change their routines by using FirstClass' features to become more efficient and organized;
• Communicate with individuals and departments through email messaging, conferences, and schedule organizing;
• Share data and information with contacts and colleagues across the hall or anywhere they're located;
• Be involved in ngoing discussions on project topics via discussion conferences;
• Use personal, organizational, and group calendars for to-do's, events, and reminders;
• Publish institutional content online;
• Gain the confidence to embrace the process of both their personal change and that of their institution; and
• Become comfortable with using the basics of their new technical tools, and possess the resources to to begin new, more efficient workstyles.

Course Participation Requirements

• Participation is required in weekly collaborative activities with colleagues. This is not a .
• Participants will be expected to be working both online and offline reading, exploring, and discussing approximately two to three hours each week. This translates to a total of at least one full eight-hour day for the four-week course.
• Participants will read materials, complete assignments, and practice their new skills within the workshops. Since they'll be able to practice their new skills on real institutional work, this allows them to learn and be productive simultaneously, cutting down on the required learning time.