Analysis of Webct 3.0

Analysis of WebCT 3.0

Harun Altay,

January 17, 2001

WebCT is a tool that facilitates the creation of World Wide Web-based educational environments. It does this in three ways:
1. It provides an interface allowing the design of the presentation of the course (color schemes, layout, etc.)
2. It provides a set of educational tools to facilitate learning, communication and collaboration.
3. It provides a set of administrative tools to assist the instructor in the process of management and continuous improvement of the course.

URL to find out about it: WebCT 3.0 products can be found at http://www.webct.com.

TOOLS

· Content Tools

· Calendar View entries in a shared calendar

· CD-ROM Access CD-ROM content directly from your computer

· Compile Summarize content from course material

· Content Module View course material

· Course Map Get a course overview

· Glossary Search for definitions of words and phrases

· Image Database View images

· Index Search for course topics and keywords

· MyWebCT Access all your WebCT 3.0 courses from one place

· Syllabus View a course outline

· Communication Tools

· Chat Communicate with your instructor and classmates real-time

· Discussions Post and reply to topics

· Mail Email your instructor and classmates

· Whiteboard Share an online drawing palette

· Evaluation Tools

· Assignments View and submit assignments

· My Grades View quiz and assignment results

· Quiz Complete and submit quizzes

· Self Test Test your knowledge without being graded

· Study Tools

· Bookmarks Bookmark frequently used course pages

· My Progress Track course pages you visited

· References View a list of relevant text books, articles, URLs

· Search Search for course words and phrases

· Student Tips Receive a "tip of the day"

· Student Homepages Create your personal web site within the course

· Student Presentations Present a project to your class

· Take Notes Make study notes by annotating course material

Cost and Licencing

These price list is an old price list, the company does not publish their prices today.

The new prices can be learned through this site : http://about.webct.com/pricing

Pricing for Educational institutions

Student Accounts / Annual License ($) / Faculty Support ($)
1-50 / 335 / 135
51-100 / 670 / 335
101-400 / 1.335 / 800
401-800 / 1.670 / 1.335
801-1600 / 2.000 / 2.000
Unlimited / 4.000 / Custom Quote

One System Administrator Support / Annual : $500

Corporate Pricing, annual, unlimited : $12.000

Training prices are being publish on the following address, I did not included them for not having a very long report.

http://about.webct.com/pricing/train_price.html

Requirements/Limitations

Supported Platforms

· Solaris: 6 or 7

· Red Hat Linux: 6.2

· Windows NT 4.0

· IBM AIX

· HP UX

· Compaq OSF1

Supported Web Server : Apache (A free web server, which is good)

NOT : Although Windows NT is also included in the list officially, in real life, NT suffers a lot in performance. For this reason, Syracuse University, IST Department changed its platform from NT, to Linux. This made a big difference.

As an example (the case of Syracuse University) :

Student and course load : 600 students, 60 courses per semester (Even, the following configuration can afford the double of that load)

Configuration : A server with 2 P3 processor at 800 MHz. 1.5 GB RAM, 30 GB Disk/RAID 5

Technical Support

Training : http://about.webct.com/pricing/train_price.html

Hosting, if you want : http://about.webct.com/pricing/host.html

There is 24 hour support for customers, with additional price.

Experience in Using It

I installed both for Syracuse University (with the administrator of this system) on Linux and in my home on Windows NT. A Unix (that is Linux) Administrator can easily install this software. It is also easy to install on NT.

To develop the content for any course, also, does not need sophisticated knowledge. One can learn it very easily. There is a lot of existing material to act as a guide.

As a consequence of the ease of use and learning, the system forces you into some predefined pattern. You don’t have so much freedom. Thus experienced users will not necessarily like WebCT. It is not consistent with natural Web model - use Flash or even PowerPoint or Adobe to produce quite nice looking pages