Shadow course hierarchy for online courses

In a computing environment for collaborative course authoring comprising a course authoring system connected to a server, a method for creating a hierarchy of course materials, the method comprising:

• creating a master course comprising a plurality of course elements;
• storing the master course in the course authoring system;
• creating a shadow course including course elements, the course elements being references to course elements of the master course;
• and
• storing the shadow course in the course authoring system,
• wherein the course elements of the shadow course which are associated with course elements of the master course.

A system for creating a hierarchy of educational courses, the system comprising:

• a plurality of user computing devices configured to connect to an course authoring system via a network connection;
• and
• an course authoring system comprising a server capable of transferring and receiving a plurality of educational information with the user computing devices, and database being configured to group the educational information as course elements in a set of master and shadow courses;
• wherein the shadow courses have course elements that are associated with corresponding course elements of a master course and any modification to a course element of the master course is automatically propagated by the course authoring system to update the corresponding course elements of the shadow courses.