November 28, 2005
Dear WebCT Faculty,
Last spring I wrote to you
about the question of an expensive upgrade to WebCT that necessitated a change
to an Oracle database. Since a majority of you wanted to go slowly and chose
the plan which was more moderate, I had been working this fall on the pricing
for WebCT 6. This took about 6 weeks because WebCT, like most Learning
Management System (LMS) companies,
has uncoupled its software and charges separately for various functions.
It's now such a complex pricing model that the salesman was having trouble
telling me what charges went with what option. I had just finished that plan,
and on the same day received an email from the CEO of WebCT stating that WebCT
had "merged" with Blackboard.
Unfortunately, it was immediately
obvious that there was no point in planning for a WebCT upgrade. Blackboard
bought out WebCT, or more accurately, WebCT customers, and can do what they
like with the software. The company is saying, at the moment, that they will
continue to support WebCT and merge products in a new combined version. The Chronicle of Higher Education has a
good article on this at: http://chronicle.com/free/2005/10/2005101301t.htm
I've worked with both
Blackboard's and WebCT's software and company reps since 1999 and know that
their products can't really be combined. The 2 products are different programs
and code, and with very different types of interfaces. The reason that WebCT
was probably eager for the sale was that they had been losing market share this
past year, due to difficult navigation and interface of its software. But many
people are surmising that WebCT should be around for another 2 years or so and
we will certainly keep the version we have now for that period.
However, it would be only
responsible to begin planning now for a transition away from WebCT. I've been
discussing this issue with the Provost, the Academic Council, our Center for Information
Technology, the ELIS Faculty
Advisory Committee, and the Academic Computing Committee. They agree that we should look at other
products. Most of the LMS software packages have standard tools such as
discussion boards, chat rooms, online quizzes/surveys, file uploading, mail,
gradebooks, and calendar. It's the ways in which you use these tools that makes
the difference.
In an attempt then to research products for what faculty
need, please let me know of anything extra in WebCT that you are using now that
would be hard to do without.
While there are many good
products on the market, Blackboard owns 80% of the market share now, so there
is not much point in looking at other commercial companies, who may be bought
out by Blackboard. Instead, we should probably look at whether, in the long
term, Blackboard or open source products would serve our interests better when
WebCT is no longer supported or available. Open source products like Moodle and
Sakai have no annual licensing fee (unlike WebCT and Blackboard, which have
annual fees ranging from $34,000--$83,000, plus other costs) and few, if any,
restrictions about use or customization. Open source software is created by a
community of users, in this case, universities and is not dependent on the fate
of any one vendor, but can be quirky and poorly documented. Since, however,
commercial products also tend to be poorly tested, at least with open source we
would be in control of new features and fixing bugs.
We'll need to compare
functionality of tools, ability to migrate courses, scalability, integration with our student
information system, server hardware and personnel support, types of roles
available in the software, philosophy and support of the creators of the
software, ease of interface, file uploading and content sharing, quiz
compatibility and statistics, administrative interface, Section 508 compliancy
(disability access), and costs.
There is a general comparison of the products from Educause at:
http://www.edutools.info/course/compare/compare.jsp?product=260,262,144,176.
As soon as we've thoroughly
researched alternative programs, I would like to get your opinions by setting
up demonstrations of two programs, Moodle and Blackboard. Both of them are
easier to use than WebCT. But I know that any change in software causes a large
amount of extra work for you and for our office, so will do all I can to
minimize that, whether it means supporting WebCT as long as I can or helping
you transfer materials.
Please let me know any
concerns or questions you might have.
Sincerely,