Harun
Altay, haltay@syr.edu
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.
· 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
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
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.
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