Understanding Sessions, Webcasts, and Assignments

Sessions, webcasts, and assignments are types of learning components. Sessions and webcasts are similar in that they are both scheduled. In other words, they provide a means to bring learners and instructors together on a specific date, at a specific time. A session learning component differs from a webcast learning component in that it also provides a physical place where the learners come together with the instructor, such as in a classroom, whereas a webcast meets over the Internet. So webcast learning components provide a virtual classroom environment, whereas session learning components provide a physical classroom environment.

Both session and webcast learning components contain sessions. A session, in this sense, is a single block of time designated for instruction. For example, a session or webcast learning component could consist of three days of instruction, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. each day. Thus, in this example, three blocks of time are designated for instruction, so this learning component would consist of three sessions.

When you schedule session and webcast learning components, you can use session patterns. Session patterns facilitate the creation of session and webcast learning components that occur over multiple days.