Experience of WebCT
at the University of Georgia
(reproduced here with permission)
I wanted to share our experience in selecting WebCT here at the University
of Georgia (UGA). In the summer of 1996 we began to build a new Internet
access system for our Campus. At about the same time, a committee of
computer professionals at UGA searched the Web and other sources of
information to identify potential applications for the delivery of Web-based
instructional resources.
As many as fifteen applications were initially identified, but that number
was quickly reduced to five because many of the applications did not offer
the features that our faculty deemed relevant. The applications remaining
for evaluation were: Web Course in a Box (WCB), WebCT, TopClass, Virtual-U,
and Learning Space (it might have been called something else at our
evaluation time - I do not recall).
We have two campus-wide Listserv lists at UGA that are devoted to teaching
and instructional issues and combined have a readership of over 500 faculty.
We invited all members of these lists to participate in the selection and
review process. We had about 50 volunteers of which about 30 were quite
active in testing and reviewing these applications. We also asked all 500
or so members of these lists for additional applications that should be
included in the selection process -- none were suggested. Our evaluators
were asked to thoroughly test the five applications and to provide feedback.
The Web-based instructional applications were either installed on a local
server at UGA or trial accounts and demos could be setup and viewed at the
various application's own Web sites. We setup a Listserv list for the
participants to discuss and evaluate the various applications. At the end of
a month or two of testing we asked the participants for final discussions
and feedback and then they were asked to vote on the application that they
felt best met UGA's needs. Not all 50 responded, but the final vote was 31
for WebCT, 1 for TopClass, and 0 for the others.
Given these results, we beta tested WebCT over the Spring and Summer of 1997
with about 70 volunteers. We began production this past September and now a
few short months later we have over 500 WebCT courses used by over 13,000
students (UGA has about 2500 teaching faculty and 30,000 students in all).
Faculty
use of WebCT here at UGA is completely voluntary and, in fact, instructors
or departments are free to use other applications if they so choose.
We support WebCT centrally via our Office of Instructional Support and
Development and our University Computing and Networking Services (the
central IT organization). We believe that this partnership has been
critical in providing balanced support here at UGA. We typically provide
training and technical support, consultation on pedagogical issues, 24 hour
7 days a week support of our central server, and similar services.
Our experiences with WebCT have been extremely positive and it has been very
well received by the faculty, staff, and students here at UGA. Currently,
we have about 300 individual faculty members offering over 500 WebCT courses
and this number is steadily growing. Most of these WebCT courses are used
in combination with lecture based instruction, however some are offered
completely online. The Web address for our local implementation of WebCT at
UGA is http://webct.uga.edu
We hold a feedback session at the end of each quarter and invite all UGA
WebCT instructors to attend. These have been real ego boosters for us --
since we hear glowing comments from most everyone. I might add that the
group that I manage supports many other computer systems on campus and we
definitely hear from users when they are dissatisfied. Fortunately, WebCT
is a exception and I don't recall a single instructor ever being unhappy
with it. My personal opinion is that WebCT is best supported software
application that I have ever used (and I have heard many others echo this
sentiment also). The folks at UBC are responsive, courteous, open to
suggestions, and really care about their product and customers.
The URLs for all of the applications we evaluated are:
WebCT http://www.webct.com,
WCB http://www.madduck.com/index.html,
Virtual-U http://virtual-u.cs.sfu.ca/vuweb/,
TopClass http://www.wbtsystems.com/,
and
Learning Space http://www.lotus.com.
The WebCT site has links to 3 independent sites that evaluated most of these
same products. The Top Class site has information on a PC WEEK evaluation
of Web-based instructional applications (although unfortunately WebCT
was not included in this evaluation). I hope this information helps you in
your evaluation.
Greg Ashley
Manager of Host Systems Support
University Computing and Networking Services
University of Georgia
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