How to Ping Pong? - Designing and tutoring an Online international introductory course A view from a tutor

During the scholarly years of 2005/06 and 2006/07, the University of Uppsala and the University of Coimbra had a joint two-year master program “Roads to Democracy(ies)”, conceived according to Tuning educational principles.

In this master, the students can choose if they want to exchange university in the second semester. The students, who choose to exchange, have in the first semester an extra seminar, a common online introductory course, using a Learn Management System (LMS) – Ping Pong. In the third and fourth semester, students have to write their thesis. The main goal of the common online seminar is to put students from the two countries working together and sharing knowledge.

In this article, we are going to provide a description, step by step, of what we have done to design the introductory course of the master program "Roads to Democracy(ies)", using Ping Pong, a Learning Management System (LMS).

Furthermore, we will be going to discuss the decisions we made about usability and design of the course. Our main goal is to provide a manual of best practices in how to setup an online class.