What is an e-course?

I forwarded my blog link to a friend last night and she came back with a very good question:
"I still don't really understand what an e-course is..."

So for the benefit of dear Emma, and anyone else who might not fully understand how an e-course works, here's a quick and basic summary ~

E-course is basically shorthand for electronic course.  Much like e-mail stands for electronic mail.
As such the entire course is conducted online, often utilising various tools, from private blogs and discussion boards, to videos and audio files.  Many courses are run in real time, so although you don't have to all be online at the same time, overall everyone is working within a designated time frame.

The great benefit of e-courses is the accessibilty.  So long as you have access to an Internet connection, you can participate.  And you will often be doing so alongside others from all over the World.  It's quite the experience, and gives a whole new meaning to the World Wide Web :)

For me, the true Queen and pioneer of successful e-courses, is Susannah Conway who runs the hugely successful Unravelling e-courses.  She actually gives a wonderful introduction to how her e-course works in a video here, and I often use her course and professionalism as a benchmark against which I consider other e-courses being offered.  I'll be blogging more about my experience unravelling in the near future.

Other e-courses are packaged into self paced e-books or give you access to private classrooms which can be downloaded/accessed immediately and worked through in your own time; for example Big Picture Scrapbooking offer both real time workshops and self paced projects.   I will be featuring a review of my previous Big Picture Scrapbooking classes soon too.

Obviously this is by no means a comprehensive guide to how e-courses work or what is available, but hopefully it gives you a general understanding.  As I post about different e-courses in the future, I'll be sure to give consideration to how the course is delivered, so as to give a more complete picture of what can be expected.