History and Future of Course Authoring/Management Technologies and Virtual Learning Environments
(Including Predictions for the 21st Century and Knowledge Portals)
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

Table of Contents

A Snapshot from 1994
A Snapshot from Today
Trends in Course Authoring Software Attributes  
Software for Creating Web Pages and Websites 
Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act  
GroupWare for Collaborative Learning
The Year 2001 eVal Study at the University of Wisconsin  
WebEx System for Delivering Online Meetings and/or Courses

Year 2006 and Beyond (including Blackboard's controversial patent)

Moodle and Other Competitors to Blackboard

Ideas for Teaching Online (including Distance Education via Centra Symposium and Webex) --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Database Driven 
 
Grove.net

Resources Including the History of Spreadsheet in Education

Delivering Lectures on Demand and Replay Learning Applications at Major Universities 

Streaming Multimedia (and a Patent Warning)

eLearning Simulation Software

Interactive Web Pages With ASP

Publications Delivery Online 

Grading of Essay and Other Questions

Predictions for the 21^st Century (including a section of Knowledge Portals)

Conversations by Phone with a Knowledge (Audio) Portal

Online versus Onsite Universities in the 21^st Century

Links to Online Courses and Programs

Appendix

Update on Education Technologies --- The Bright Side Versus the Dark Side

Web Design Tools 

The Free PageOut from McGraw-Hill

Additional Readings

Current and past eLearning and course management alternatives are listed by year at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_virtual_learning_environments

Webmonkey's How to Library

HOW-TO LIBRARY

Authoring
Design
Multimedia
E-Business
Programming
Backend
Jobs

Bob Jensen's helpers are linked at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm 

A Snapshot from 1994

The purpose of this paper is to briefly trace the short, and in some cases short-lived, history of hypertext and hypermedia course authoring software packages.  I will also summarize the early attributes of course authoring software vis-a-vis attributes of new and surviving packages.  For a more comprehensive coverage of the entire history of distance education, see http://distancelearn.about.com/education/distancelearn/msubhist.htm 

Since I began this threading document of authoring software, an excellent software information guide appeared on the web.  Go to http://www.ctt.bc.ca/landonline/evalapps.html 

In 1994, Petrea Sandlin and I wrote a book entitled Electronic Teaching and Learning: Trends in Adapting to Hypertext, Hypermedia, and Networks in Higher Education.  That book covers a lot of the early history of applications of computing technologies to the authoring of documents in courses or the authoring of complete courses.  First there was hypertext navigation software that roots as far back as the 1940s, but hypertext software really did not have a serious impact on training and education until the 1980s when  the Owl Corporation developed a DOS commercial course authoring package called GUIDE.  Prior to that, there were hypertext training and education applications, but these did not entail use of off-the-shelf software.  Projects like the Plato project at the University of Illinois and various military and corporate training applications entailed software development alongside applications development.  A DOS outgrowth of Plato software became known at Tencore.  However, Tencore was slow to adapt to the Windows operating system and lost market shares to upstart companies like Asymetrix Corporation and others listed below.

Following the introduction of Owl's Guide, a raft of off-the-shelf options appeared in the 1980s.  There were two types of course authoring options that are discussed below.  The Course Management System (CMS) software had many features that were not available in what Jensen and Sandlin defined as Alternative Software.  In Chapter 3, they identified ten CMS packages for computerizing complete courses.   They started with hypertext utilities and then added hypermedia authoring features in the early 1990s.  Most of the established products below have survived to 1999 with sales for corporate training, but virtually none of them ever had profitable sales to colleges and universities.  The ten leading 1994  CMS packages identified and discussed on considerable detail in Chapter 3 of Jensen and Sandlin (1994) were as follows:

• Quest from Allen Communication
• Tourguide from American Training International ( Tourguide is no longer listed as a product at Infotec.)
• Multimedia ToolBook from Asymetrix Corporation Click2Learn SumTotal Systems 
• Lesson Builder from the Center for Education Technology in Accounting (this product never was completed)
• Tencore from Computer Teaching Corporation
• Course Builder from Discovery Systems International, Inc.
• Training Icon Environment (TIE) from Global Information Systems Technology, Inc.
• tbtAuthor from HyperGraphics Corporation (HyperGraphics no longer lists tbtAuthor in its product line)
• Authorware from Macromedia Corporation
• Personal Education Authoring Kit (PEAK) from Major Educational Resources Corp.  PEAK is for Mac users only and has been discontinued.  However, while they last you can get free copies at 800-989-5353

Most of the above CMS packages were designed for floppy disk or CD-ROM delivery and management of multimedia courses.  These packages peaked in popularity about 1995.  Aside from fierce competition, the major cause of their decline was the World Wide Web that commenced in 1990 but did not become popular until HTML authoring and editing software packages became available in around 1995.  With simple HTML authoring, students can obtain hypertext and hypermedia navigation from documents served up all over the world from a single server.  Equally important, the HTML documents can be updated in real time.  These two huge advantages of web authoring triggered the downslide of CMS course authoring for both corporate training and higher education.  

One of the problems with CD-ROM authoring is that authors and publishing firms in general did not make profits on costly CD-ROM books and courses.  Corporations make good use of them in training programs, but the Internet is rapidly becoming more popular due to ease of access and ease of updating course materials on web server files.  "There are 25,000 CD-ROMs sitting there with nobody making any money from them" according to Marc Canter in "Inventing New Venues," NewMedia, August 1999, pg.17.  For an earlier (August 1998) analysis of what went wrong, see http://newmedia.com/NewMedia/98/09/feature/trip.html.

In addition to the above ten packages that were viable CMS course authoring packages in 1994, there were at least 40 other hypertext and hypermedia software "Alternative Option" packages that did not offer full CMS management options.  However, these other alternatives were nevertheless widely used to author files for training and education courses.  These are listed along with some video software options in  Chapter 3 of Jensen and Sandlin (1994).  Most of these have also disappeared from sight at the end of the 20^th Century.  Once again the main contributing factors were intense competition and inefficiency and ineffectiveness of CD-ROM authoring tools as web authoring tools.  Some of the Macintosh packages disappeared as Apple Corporation's market share dwindled.  Others just did not convert the DOS software to the Windows operating system for PCs.

It might be noted that in addition to over 50 course authoring tools in 1994, there were many intensely-competitive presentation software packages.  In 1994 these included  SPC's Harvard Graphics, Gold Disk's Astound, Asymetrix's Compel, Microsoft's PowerPoint, Macromedia's Action, Micrografx's Charisma, Just-Ask-Me, On-The-Air, Lotus Corporation's Freelance, Word Perfect's Presentations, Stanford Graphics, Special Delivery, Q/Media, Zuma Group's Curtain Call, Multimedia Design’s mPower, and others listed in Appendix 6 of Jensen and Sandlin (1994).  By 1999, these have been eclipsed by Microsoft PowerPoint.  None of these presentation packages were hypertext or hypermedia authoring tools.  For example, users could navigate "pages" nonlinearly, but it was not possible to add scripts to "hot words" that would perform scripted actions such as navigation to particular words and paragraphs on other "pages."  

You can read more about the history of course authoring and management systems at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_virtual_learning_environments

A Snapshot from Today

Answer
Top 100 --- http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100.html
Various experts list their Top 10 --- http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/index.html

Jensen Comment
I totally disagree with the rankings of the Top 100 and the Top 10.

Where is Blackboard and WebCT? --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard

Where are the many important tools for handicapped learners? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped

Where is Camtasia? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm

Where are the edutainment and learning game alternatives? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment

Where is Matlab (used in virtually every U.S. university) --- --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATLAB

Like it or not, Wikipedia is one of the most sought out sights in the world by e-Learners --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
There are risks, but the odds are high that users will get helpful learning information and links.

Where are HTML and related XML/RTF and XBRL markups?  --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm  

Where are the many huge and free online libraries? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm

Where are the important blogs and listservs? --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm

I could go on and on here!

Bob Jensen

Bob Jensen's threads on the history of course authoring, management, and presentation technologies are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on tools and tricks of the trade are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm 

August 3, 2007 reply from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

Bob:
I agree with you that the list is flawed - Toolbook should be #1

Richard J. Campbell
mailto:campbell@rio.edu

August 3, 2007 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Richard

ToolBook should’ve been number 1 but it fumbled the ball. What proportion of e-Learners are now learning, today, from ToolBooks? My guess is that much less than one percent. A negligible proportion of instructors are developing learning materials using ToolBook dhtml files relative to FrontPage and Dreamweaver htm files.

The biggest innovation for e-Learners and authors was Adobe Acrobat’s tremendous development of online pdf files that could be read and electronically searched for free but not be tampered with by readers. Now major commercial publishing houses are putting new books on line as pdf files.

One of the biggest innovations I forgot to mention was the unknown (at least to me) date in which MS Office files (particularly ppt, doc, and xls files) could be downloaded and read from Web servers that at one time only could handle htm markups. In terms of e-learning htm, pdf, doc, xls, and ppt files are overwhelmingly the main files for e-Learning, although they are now joined by such files as xml files.

Another huge e-Learning innovation that I forgot to mention is the unknown (at least to me) date in which the above learning and research files could be attached to email messages. This made it easier to have private distributions (say to students in a class) without having to put files on Web, Blackboard, or WebCT servers. Anybody with email can not send files back and forth.

There is still a great risk of macro viruses when downloading MS Office files from the Web or email messages. However, most e-Learners are doing so from trusted Web sites and/or email senders such as files from their course instructors.

ToolBook could fade away and the world would hardly know about it or miss it.

Bob Jensen

Current and past eLearning and course management alternatives are listed by year at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_virtual_learning_environments

The near-monopoly of course management systems since 1994 has been Blackboard (Bb) since Bb was allowed by the Government to buy out its WebCT arch competitor --- http://www.blackboard.com/us/index.Bb

Question
What's next in course management since Blackboard is taking aim at its own foot with monopoly pricing?

Bob Jensen's threads on alternatives to Blackboard are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Blackboard.htm

Updates on Moodle --- See below!

Updates on Sloodle and Second Life (virtual world learning) --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife
The above link includes accounting education applications of Second Life.

Question
In edutainment generation of students, does virtual learning have to be fun?

"Virtual Labor Lost:  The failure of a highly anticipated game shows the academic limits of virtual worlds," by Erica Naone, MIT's Technology Review, December 5, 2007 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19817/?nlid=719

Academics are flocking to use virtual worlds and multiplayer games as ways to research everything from economics to epidemiology, and to turn these environments into educational tools. But one such highly anticipated effort--a multiplayer game about Shakespeare meant to teach people about the world of the bard while serving as a place for social-science experiments--is becoming its own tragedy.

The game, called Arden, the World of Shakespeare, was a project out of Indiana University funded with a $250,000 MacArthur Foundation grant. Its creator, Edward Castronova, an associate professor of telecommunications at the university, wanted to use the world to test economic theories: by manipulating the rules of the game, he hoped to find insights into the way that money works in the real world. Players can enter the game and explore a town called Ilminster, where they encounter characters from Shakespeare, along with many plots and quotations. They can answer trivia questions to improve their characters and play card games with other players. Coming from Castronova, a pioneer in the field, the game was expected by many to show the power of virtual-world-based research.

But Castronova says that there's a problem with the game: "It's no fun." While focusing on including references to the bard, he says, his team ended up sidelining some of the fundamental features of a game. "You need puzzles and monsters," he says, "or people won't want to play ... Since what I really need is a world with lots of players in it for me to run experiments on, I decided I needed a completely different approach."

Castronova has abandoned active development of Arden; he released it last week to the public as is, rather than starting up the experiments he had planned. Part of the problem: it costs a lot to build a new multiplayer game. While his grant was large for the field of humanities, it was a drop in the bucket compared with the roughly $75 million that he says goes into developing something on the scale of the popular game World of Warcraft. "I was talking to people like it was going to be Shakespeare: World of Warcraft, but the money you need for that is so much more," he says. Castronova also says that he was taking on too much by attempting to combine education and research. He believes that his experience should serve as a warning for other academics.

Ian Bogost, a video-game researcher and assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, agrees. "It's very, very hard to make games in the best of circumstances, and a university is never the best of circumstances," he says. "I have serious doubts about not just the potential for success but even the appropriateness of pursuing development work of this kind in the context of the university." If researchers are going to build games for the purposes of research, Bogost says, he thinks it's important to look at the process realistically, and with a scientific eye. "In most disciplines, it's okay to fess up to what worked and what didn't. In laboratory work, you do this all the time ... If this is really research and not just production, then of course there are going to be these kinds of surprises."

September 18, 2007 message from Peters, James M [jpeters@NMHU.EDU]

Our (small and poor) University is looking at alternative to Blackboard to support both local and internet classes. I recall that this issue was discussed recently on this list and was wondering if any of you would be willing to provide some short statements about alternative products to Blackboard and your assessment of them. Bluntly, the merger between Blackboard and WebCt was, in my opinion, a disaster for the consumer. The existing Blackboard product is full of programming bugs and I would like to be able to go to the committee on which I serve with viable options to switching. However, the State of New Mexico also is looking into standardizing a product state-wide and so the alternatives need to be viable for larger Universities as well.

Any thoughts or comments would be welcome. Since I haven't used this list much, if there is an old archive of threaded discussions I can review that would be useful as well.

Thanks.

Jim Peters, PhD
Associate Professor of Accounting
School of Business
213 Sininger Hall
New Mexico Highlands University
Las Vegas, NM 87701

October 8, 2007 message from Allen M. Ford, MBA, MSSE, MFA [amfnbt@RIT.EDU]

My two cents: The Business Studies Department at NTID offers a variety of courses through the moodle platform set up on a local server. I find it a very attractive alternative to Bb and Desire2Learn (current RIT standard) in that it handles larger files (think DB) and is extremely instructor friendly. While I do "train" and help faculty set up courses, I find that once they learn how easy and intuitive it is, they require minimal hand-holding. In the past five years we have had no server related issues...upgrades require minimal techie intervention. In comparison with my experience teaching COB DL courses using Desire2Learn, if it were my decision, I would use moodle.

That said, I would encourage faculty to investigate what online resources are available from publishers. During a current textbook process, Wiley's EZ-Plus impressed the committee with its CMS that are content specific and ready to roll. Check it out at: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Brand/id-31.html

September 18, reply from Del DeVries [devriesd@MAIL.BELMONT.EDU]

The "what next" question that is most interesting to me is what technology is compelling for engaging students in learning? If I use Skype for online office hours, I believe that I am more accessible to students AND the opportunity for easy voice / chat / file transfer are good for solving some student problems. I can use Camtasia to create audio/video Flash demo's to illustrate a "how-to". Both Skype and Camtasia are good for communicating with students who may not physically show up in my office. But what are the other possibilities that are both cost effective, time effective, AND work to engage student learning?

The AECM (and Bob Jenson's archive of links) are a virtual treasure chest of idea's over the years. Today's students are very comfortable with wireless laptops, enhanced phones, and general savy for social networking with Facebook, etc. But at the end of the day I'm still asking the question of what technologies would be useful for engaging with tomorrow's (and today's) students.

 

Dr. Del DeVries, CPA, CISA
Assistant Professor of Accounting & Information Systems
College of Business Administration
Belmont University 1900 Belmont Blvd Nashville, TN 37212 615-460-6930

Reply from Bob Jensen on September 18, 2007

Hi Del and Jim,

When there is an unregulated monopoly, expect both prices and patent infringement suits to skyrocket. Blackboard should've never been allowed to buy WebCT. My threads on Blackboard are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Blackboard.htm

There are various competitors to Blackboard competitors, many of whom have been involved in lawsuits with Blackboard and WebCT. Many of these competitors (e.g., Sakai, Moodle, and ATutor) are listed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard_Inc
Some schools with severe funding problems use Moodle.

Moodle Homepage --- http://moodle.org/ The good news is that Moodle is free. A lot of colleges, especially small colleges, changed to Moodle after Blackboard commenced monopoly pricing. You can track Moodle News (the good, the bad, and the ugly) at http://eduspaces.net/moodlenews/weblog/160022.html Moodle purportedly is very flexible, in part, because it has open source coding. Many of the positives are outlined at http://moodle.com/ There is also a help desk. Like many open source options, including Open Source Office, Moodle keeps getting better and better. Old criticisms may no longer be applicable. I recently gave an education technology workshop for accounting educators in Mississippi. Many of the users were happy with Moodle. And there's Sloodle for open source virtual learning software --- http://www.sloodle.com/ December 4, 2007 message from Vidya Second Life is a 3D virtual environment and in that regard not a competitor to Moodle at all. Sloodle is actually the Moodle counterpart to courses taught in Second Life and in that sense it's symbiotic relationship of sorts between the 3D immersive virtual environment and astandard 2D learning environment :-). Vidya Ananthanarayanan Instructional Support Manager Center for Learning and Technology Trinity University vidya@trinity.com/210.999.7346| http://www.trinity.edu/clt

The expense of Blackboard, and all of these alternatives, in fact is much more than licensing fees. The expensive problem is the technical support staff needed to both maintain the servers (these systems have their own servers) and to train users of the system, students and staff. This is an expense that never ends. Most importantly there must be relatively expensive backup systems. Servers crash and burn. If courses across a campus become dependent on those servers, it is vital to have backup systems that can be shifted into gear almost immediately. This is where IT staff become crucial.

Of course Blackboard and other vendors like eCollege can take all the IT headaches off campus. This is something I recommend for smaller colleges, but it is more expensive in some ways and cheaper in others considering the expensive and specialized IT skills needed to maintain servers and backup systems.

Below is a virtual-office-hours tidbit for the September 28 edition of Tidbits.  I wouldn't describe virtual office hours as a competitor to Blackboard as much as it addresses Del's question of “What next?” However, at Harvard this is “What now?” Various "What next?" scenarios are listed at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm

There are many other “what next?” possibilities, the most important of which will be a joint effort (academe, standard setters, and industry) to develop massive Wiki-like and YouTube-like knowledge bases filled with pedagogical videos, spreadsheets, and hyperlinks on almost any accounting, auditing, and systems topic imaginable. These probably will be somewhat more secure than Wikipedia/YouTube, but it still will be in the open sharing and development spirit. I’m constantly amazed at the immense (over a billion) number of modules in Wikipedia that just grew and grew. My experience is that most of the modules are excellent except for some politically sensitive topics and highly specialized topics in technical disciplines.

This is why Camtasia is so important. More and more we will see YouTube-like videos that can be used tot take over more and more where the classroom leaves off. See some of the Acct 5341 and Acct5342 illustrations at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/ (I’m not quite sure why I downloaded the Astaire-Powel and BravoAmerica videos in  this folder a long, long time ago --- Dah!)

In the future, instructors can focus more on motivation to learn and underlying theory while leaving the technical explanations to the knowledge bases where technical explanations and illustrations can be played over and over again and again until they are understood by users. This of course is very frightening to many instructors who are practiced at explaining technical modules and lousy at explaining underlying theory.

The searching will be partly like XBRL if the knowledge base items have XML tags and eventually, as Jagdish points out, Semantic Web searching --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm

It never ceases to amaze me how much knowledge is already available in Wikipedia and YouTube. These are open sharing knowledge bases to be used with caution and suspicion. But they are unbelievably vast in terms of history and, in the case of Wikipedia, full of reference links and highly informative user discussions. Knowledge has become so vast that it boggles our minds. Rather than be scholars filled with facts and figures, we will become scholars who can tap into facts, figures, and knowledge-base explanations that we’re educated enough to comprehend on an as-needed basis.

I can’t remember how to do half the things I put into Camtasia videos (especially in my MS Access videos), but I play them back once or twice and it all makes sense again. What an aid to me these videos are whenever I have to teach something in Access, Excel, XBRL, intangible assets valuation, etc. If only others in the academy would see fit to freely share their Camtasia videos. Sigh!

Anybody interested in developing Camtasia videos might look at my PowerPoint file on Camtasia at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/EdTech/PowerPoint/

Bob Jensen

Bob Jensen's threads on alternatives to Blackboard are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Blackboard.htm

Current and past eLearning and course management alternatives are listed by year at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_virtual_learning_environments

Updates on Sloodle and Second Life (virtual world learning) --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife
The above link includes accounting education applications of Second Life.

PLATO Orion Standards and Curriculum Integrator.
Largest Idaho District Selects PLATO Orion for Standards-Based Teaching Initiative PLATO Learning Inc. announced it has been awarded a $454,000 agreement with Idaho's Meridian Joint School District for a districtwide implementation of PLATO Orion Standards and Curriculum Integrator. PLATO Orion is an integrated instructional management system that supports the continuous improvement and data-driven decision-making processes of educational organizations. At the district level, it helps curriculum specialists identify standards and objectives for each grade and allows administrators to identify gaps in standards coverage within existing materials and lesson plans. At the building level, teachers use PLATO Orion to access, create, and use formative assessments to identify students' strengths and weaknesses and then identify and assign aligned resources, including PLATO Instructional Solutions, lessons plans, textbooks, and Web sites for individualized instruction.
T.H.E. Newsletter on June 15, 2005

For the full story, visit http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/050609/95097.html?.v=1 

I'm not certain how well it is doing, but Authorware is still alive ---
http://www.macromedia.com/software/authorware/?promoid=home_prod_aw_082403 

Toolbook is also still alive, but it is a long ways from the original ToolBook coded in OpenScript.  Users now rely more on pre-coded templates with fewer customization and creativity alternatives.

Both Authorware and ToolBook are used more in the corporate training world with academic applications on campuses being few and far between.  Far more important on campuses have been the course management systems of WebCT and Blackboard.

Presedia:  A new product from Macromedia in Year 2003 --- http://www.macromedia.com/macromedia/presedia/presentation/145326/ 
The above website has an audio overview from Macromedia.

In addition to course management and examination grading utilities, the above CMS course authoring packages had "scripting" options that allowed authors to attach scripts to objects such as hot words.  These scripts afforded authors an opportunity to be highly creative and not be restricted to pre-programmed templates.  In most instances the scripting languages were proprietary.  The best-known scripting language was Lingo used in Macromedia's Authorware and Director.  The Asymetrix (now Click-to-Learn SumTotal Systems) ToolBook proprietary scripting language is called OpenScript.  This was both a blessing and a curse.  It was a blessing in terms of opportunities for authoring creativity.  It was a curse in terms of learning how to write scripts without syntax errors.  One of the reasons CMS packages did not sell well to instructors was the time it took to become skilled at adding scripts.

"Director MX Versus Flash," by Michael Kay, Webmonkey, January 28, 2003 ---  http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/03/03/index1a.html 

Director, which hit the scene way back in 1988, was always considered the ultimate multimedia authoring tool. Then the Web came along and Shockwave, a format that translated Director projects for the Web, was born. It was pretty wowie in its day (circa 1995), but the size of Shockwave files, along with the browser plugin users needed to see them, really slowed Shockwave down. Enter Flash's SWF format, which was designed solely for the Web so it was faster and easier to use than Shockwave. And the rest is history: Flash is everywhere, and whipper-snapper Web developers are all, "Shockwave who?"

But Shockwave has its uses.

Flash may be better than ever these days, but you can still outgrow it. Say you need better video performance, or you want to create a game or educational tool that uses a joy stick. Or maybe you're looking for the depth of 3D animation. When it comes to interactive projects in the non-Web world (yes, it's true, there is life outside the Web) — such as CD-ROM games, educational materials, reference books, and presentations — sometimes Flash just isn't enough. If you're tackling a big-league, off-Web project, or a particularly intricate website, then perhaps it's time to take another look at Macromedia's Director MX.

To be honest, the last time I paid any serious attention to Director was a good few releases ago. So when I siddled up to the latest version, I brought my old prejudices with me: that it was no longer a serious player, that Flash had passed it by long ago. But Director MX changed my mind.

Director has supported Flash vector content for awhile now, which helps performance, and Director 8.5 introduced real 3D support. Version MX, however, takes multimedia development to a whole new level. With even better Flash integration and a host of new features, Director MX is now the most powerful general interactive tool out there. And when it comes to non-Web projects with fewer file-size limitations, such as a kiosk or CD-ROM, Director is even more compelling.

Shold every Flash developer and Web designer run out and purchase Director MX today? At US$1,199 a pop, I'm not saying that. But if budget allows, and your next project has graduated past the abilities of Flash, Director MX could be the answer. In the pages that follow, I'll go over some of the issues you might want to consider as you contemplate taking the Director plunge

Continued in the article.

Largely because of scripting complexities and lack of authoring friendliness and relatively high licensing fees, the CMS authoring packages never sold well in academe.  They were sustained by the corporate and government training market where technicians could be employed to write the scripts.  In most instances what sustained the companies was the consulting side of the business where employees of the software vendor were employed as development consultants to write training courses.  Colleges and universities usually did not have the resources to employ these consultants to create education courses.

As we move into the 21^th Century, most of the above CMS products have either disappeared entirely or are being drastically re-engineered for web delivery.  Vendors of CMS packages have not made money on software sales.  Those that managed to stay in business did so on the basis of corporate training program consulting.  In most instances, the survivors had to adopt totally different underlying software more suited to web delivery of courses in place of CD-ROM delivery.  For example, my favorite CD-ROM course authoring alternative was ToolBook from Asymetrix.  Although this is still and excellent alternative for CD-ROM authoring of books and courses, Asymetrix has announced that it is no longer going to feature or upgrade ToolBook programmed in its proprietary OpenScript.  Even though Asymetrix developed a web reader called Neuron for ToolBooks, web delivery of Neuron books over the Internet is neither efficient nor effective.  An analogy that I previously used is that web serving of Toolbooks coded in OpenScript or Authorware courses coded in Lingo are like pushing 800 lb gorillas through a garden hose.  

In 1999 the proprietary scripting market share has been taken over by HTML authoring software (notably Microsoft FrontPage), presentation software (notably Microsoft PowerPoint), and Adobe Acrobat.  However, since those popular options lack utilities for dynamic interactions online, there is a move toward adding dynamic HTML (DHTML) authoring software (e.g., Macromedia Dreamweaver), Java, and other server-side web authoring software listed below.  The most significant happening in 1999 was the addition of utilities in Microsoft Excel 2000 and Access 2000 to automatically convert Visual Basic codes into DHTML codes that can be read inside web browsers such as Internet Explorer.  Microsoft's addition of round tripping allows for reverse coding back into Visual Basic.

Probably most significant in recent years is the emergence of web authoring packages for server-side (shell) delivery of interactive courses.  In some cases, the new packages are being delivered by companies whose former authoring software is dead or dying.  For example, tbtAuthor from HyperGraphics Corporation is dead as a CMS package, but the new eInstruction Corporation web servers have kept the company alive and well.  In some instances, universities originated server "shells" that evolved quickly into full-featured commercial web authoring packages.  For example, a large market share is now held by WebCT that commenced at the University of British Columbia.  The rapidly-rising Blackboard system commenced at Cornell University.  Some alternatives are lesser-known and are still marketed from universities such as Mallard from the University of Illinois, Oncourse available from Indiana University, and Serf available from the University of Delaware.  Beware that free packages or packages still sold by universities often do not have some of the upgrade features found in alternatives that were developed initially at universities and then sold to corporations for further development and marketing.

I was once a ToolBook enthusiast and developed all my courses around CDs that I created in ToolBook.  ToolBook was a long-time main product of Asymetrix Corporation that later became part of Click-to-Learn --- http://home.click2learn.com/ 

ToolBook and Authorware were leading products for interactive CD learning technologies and course management systems.  Both had huge learning curves for course authors, but the capabilities for interactive learning were leading edge until networked learning became common place.  Authors had to learn how to code using either OpenScript for ToolBook or Lingo for Authurware.  Although both products had free readers that could be installed on computers, these never worked really well and learning modules were just too large and complicated for Internet Delivery.  ToolBook abandoned further development of OpenScript and resorted to DHTML templates that are more efficient for delivery of courses on the Internet, but eliminate creative authoring that was possible in OpenScript.

Both Click-to-Learn (for ToolBook) and Macromedia (for Authorware and Dreamweaver) missed the boat in terms of capturing the academic market.  WebCT and Blackboard upstarts from Cornell University (Blackboard) and the University of British Columbia (WebCT) went commercial and virtually captured the market on college campuses around the world.

Belatedly in 2002, Click-to-Learn made a desperation pricing move to get a wedge in the college market.  On May 24, 2002, Click-to-Learn sent the following message to potential customers:

Advances in e-learning are transforming the way we think about education. Learning is now a lifelong process and necessity, requiring that courses are available to people "anytime, anyplace, at any pace."

ToolBook Instructor enables educators to easily create engaging, highly interactive courses to accelerate the learning process. It walks you step-by-step through both content creation and the most effective method to deliver finished courses using the Internet or CD-ROM.

ToolBook enables you to: Quickly design Web-ready curriculum, quizzes, and exams using built-in templates, catalogs, and wizards. Enable your students to see and hear what you are teaching them using streaming media. Create "show-me" and "try-me" simulations and custom functions using the Actions Editor, a visual programming tool.

Special Offer!
Place your order by August 30, 2002, we'll give you a renewable campus-wide site license for only $2,599 a year. ToolBook Instructor normally retails for $2,599 per individual copy, but if you act now you will enjoy this same low price but receive this site license for your entire campus to use!

You will receive:

• Unlimited seats on one campus for use by faculty, employees, and students.
• Unlimited technical support via email for one designated contact.

Order today by calling 1.800.471.5184 ext 1541 or send email to sales@click2learn.com

Best Regards,
Click2learn, Inc.

This move is probably too little too late.  WebCT and Blackboard are too entrenched and have features not available in TookBook.  Most notably, WebCT and Blackboard have database interface features that allow student information from the Registrar's Office (course enrollments, email addresses, etc.) to be automatically posted for every course on campus.  For example, at Trinity University our student and financial database from Datatel interfaces with our Blackboard system.

Another risk from investing financial and intellectual capital in ToolBook is that ToolBook has never been profitable to Click-to-Learn.  Even on a pro-forma basis that puts the company in the best possible light, net earnings are increasingly negative.  The company lost $0.86 per share in 2000 and $0.60 per share in 2001.  The trend is upward, but desperation pricings such as the deal offered above do not send out promising signals for the long-term future of ToolBook.

To me this is very sad since I invested so much of my time and money learning to use ToolBook.  This is yet another example of an educational software company that did not understand what is known as cost-profit-volume (CPV) analysis in managerial accounting.  Companies that price very high for a niche market (in ToolBook's case training software for large and wealthy companies) and price themselves out of the mass market (in this case colleges, universities and K-12 schools) find themselves left high and dry when their niche market falters.  Companies like Microsoft, WebCT, BlackBoard, and JASC understood that when it comes to software it is better to either give products away for free or price them extremely cheap until individuals and organizations get hooked on using them.  Then price the upgrades low enough to keep them hooked and continue to hold millions (or in the case of Microsoft billions) of customers.  Than is what CPV analysis is all about.

I was once a strong advocate of ToolBook, but I lost interest in ToolBook when it changed to more of a template-oriented course authoring and course management system in a succession of product and corporate name changes.  Richard Campbell is probably our most loyal remaining Toolbook users in accounting education --- http://www.virtualpublishing.net 
It is almost certain that he will be experimenting with the new SumTotal Systems package.  

Now there are some more Toolbook changes, including a corporate name change, described in the message below.

April 1, 2004 message from Janet Chappell [jchappell@sumtotalsystems.com] 

Click2learn Changes Name

 Click2learn and Docent merged March 19 to form SumTotal Systems.  

A Powerful Simulation Capability Added to ToolBook
Now you can create simulations that may be used in 3 modes: show me, try me and test me. Details are included in the Instructor 2004 datasheet:

 http://www.sumtotalsystems.com/toolbook/datasheets/toolbook_instructor_200

 New Examples of ToolBook Content

 http://www.sumtotalsystems.com/toolbook/showcase/index.html

 Up Coming Web-based Demonstrations

 TB Instructor Simulations: April 20, 11 am PT, noon MT, 1 pm CT or 2 pm ET

 Overview of ToolBook: April 22, 11 am PT, noon MT, 1 pm CT or 2 pm ET

 All you will need is a phone for the conference call and a PC with  Internet access for the visuals. Send me an email requesting the logon information if interested.

Link to Trial Download

 http://www.sumtotalsystems.com/toolbook/downloads/index.html

 Please contact me if you would like more information about ToolBook.

 There are academic and government discounts available.

 Best regards,

 

 JANET CHAPPELL,
Acct Mgr, Sales OFFICE +1 800 471 5184 x1541
SumTotal Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq; SUMT) FAX +1 425 637 1504
110 110th Avenue NE
Bellevue WA 98271 EMAIL jchappell@sumtotalsystems.com 

WebCT and Blackboard now hold virtually all the college and university market plus the majority portion of the enormous primary and secondary K-12 school market.  ToolBook and Authorware adopted failed marketing and product development strategies for the education market.  Along a similar vein, Lotus, Netscape, and Apple had failed marketing and product development strategies that allowed Bill Gates to become the wealthiest man in the world instead of being a used car salesman.  Bill Gates, more than any other CEO in the world, understands CPV analysis.  Click-to-Learn is catching on too late with a product that can no longer compete.

But Blackboard is now shooting itself in the foot with monopoly pricing, thereby paving the way for open source Moodle --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm#Moodle

2008

Question
Where can a college turn for course management software when the college feels like Blackboard is a monopoly rip-off and Moodle is too dependent upon open source innovations and maintenance?

Before reading this module you may want to first read about Blackboard and Moodle at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Blackboard.htm

Richard Campbell sent a link to the site below and mentioned that this may be Microsoft's bit to compete with Blackboard.

Microsoft Learning Gateway Community --- http://www.learninggateway.net/default.aspx

Microsoft Learning Gateway (MLG) is a powerful, extensible suite of features designed to help schools meet their priorities using a scalable, cost-effective framework. By deploying a Learning Gateway solution, you can give students personalized learning portals that bring together everything they need to support their classes. Password-protected access can be extended to parents, providing up-to-the-minute information on students’ attendance, grades, assignments, timetables, and upcoming events. Administrators are provided with a secure, personalized interface from which they can improve planning and follow-through and make effective decisions. Senior IT decision makers are better equipped to analyze data and report key information to governors, regulators, ministries, and other key agencies.

Whether your institution adopts a top-down or bottom-up approach, you can deploy a Learning Gateway framework that can support how you want to progress with the flexibility to accommodate later developments. This means your investments are future-proofed, even during times of rapid change. Click on the links below to learn much more about the capabilities of MLG when combined with partner solutions. Afterwards, contact a Microsoft partner who can customize Learning Gateway components into solutions tailored to meet your needs.

Jensen Comment
Happily it's the enormously wealthy Microsoft making this move. Any company making such a move is likely to be sued by Blackboard since Blackboard is now claiming it has a patent on everything connected with course management and distance education. We can hope and pray that Microsoft will spend whatever needed to end these monopoly visions of Blackboard.

---

"Blackboard Wins Patent-Infringement Case Against Rival Courseware Provider," by Katherine Mangan, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 22, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/news/article/4022/blackboard-wins-patent-infringement-case-against-rival-courseware-provider

A federal jury in Texas ruled this afternoon in favor of Blackboard Inc., the nation’s leading online provider of course-management software, in its patent-infringement lawsuit against Desire2Learn Inc.

Blackboard sued the smaller Canadian-based company in 2006, asserting that it had infringed a patent that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had granted Blackboard that year. As a result, the larger company said, Desire2Learn had taken away customers that should have been Blackboard’s.

Desire2Learn, which has its headquarters in Kitchener, Ontario, argued that Blackboard’s patent was invalid and should never have been granted in the first place. Lawyers for the company said that Blackboard officials were aware of similar technology, or what’s known as “prior art,” that existed before it filed its patent application, and that the company had failed to divulge that information to the patent office.

The jury, which began deliberating just before noon on Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Lufkin, Tex., announced its verdict this afternoon. The case has been closely watched by campus-technology officials, many of whom feared that a win by Blackboard could stifle innovation and leave colleges and course-management software providers vulnerable to more legal challenges by Blackboard.

2007

• On January 25 of 2007 it was announced that the Software Freedom Law Center was successful in its request that the United States Patent and Trademark Office re-examine the e-learning patent owned by Blackboard Inc. The request was filed in November 2006 on the behalf of Sakai, Moodle, and ATutor. The Patent Office found that prior art cited in SFLC's request raises "a substantial new question of patentability" regarding all 44 claims of Blackboard's patent. Groklaw, a website that tracks legal issues generally related to Open Source software, has the press release: Groklaw.org
• February 1, 2007, Blackboard announced via press release "The Blackboard Patent Pledge". In this pledge to the open source and do-it-yourself course management community, the company vows to forever refrain from asserting its patent rights against open-source developers, except where it is deemed necessary.
• February, 2007, Technological Fluency Institute releases a Windows XP version of its online prescriptive diagnostic performance based CAT1 program.
• March 7, 2007: The OLAT team releases OLAT 5.1 which has an emphasis on consolidation of features and bugfixing. Besides this a new glossary function has been added and accessibility has been improved.

 

• October 18,2007: Controlearning s.a. and ocitel s.a. designed and developed Campus VirtualOnline, http://www.campusvirtualonline.com (CVO), a platform where is mixed e-learning content, e-books, e-money, e-docs, e-talents in one single place.The accessibility is possible by a one year membership gived by www.consolidos.com to all the hispanic world.

 

There were earlier examples of companies that failed to grasp the long-term importance of CPV analysis.

At the moment there are two types of systems.  One type might be called an "internal web authoring server system" in the sense that the author or the author's institution must provide and maintain the web servers.  For example, WebCT can be installed on internal servers, but the company that sells and develops WebCT did not intially offer server space for authors.  In contrast, eInstrruction offers external web servers such that neither authors nor their institutions have to serve up courses locally.  Other companies like Blackboard, that eventually bought out WebCT, offer internal and external web server options.  A number of internal-system course authoring alternatives are shown below:

A Great Summary of Web Instruction Resources 
Sharon Gray, Instructional Technologist --- http://inst.augie.edu/%7Egray/ 
Augustana College, 2001 Summit Ave., Sioux Falls, SD  57197
gray@inst.augie.edu, 605-274-4907 
For GREAT comprehensive listing of Web Instruction Resources, go to http://inst.augie.edu/~gray/WBI.html

From Syllabus News on March 14, 2003

eCollege, Houghton Mifflin Strike Content Sharing Accord

Course management system developer eCollege formed a partnership with publisher Houghton Mifflin Inc. to provide eCollege's customers access to Houghton Mifflin's online supplements for introductory courses in business, humanities, mathematics, science, social science, student success, and world languages. The titles will be available via the eCollege AU+ course management system, and will enable faculty to use the platform’s self-authoring and course development tools to improve their online courses. "It's important that faculty members have access to the kind of resources they need to best engage and challenge their students, and we believe the Houghton Mifflin content can ideally support them in this effort," said Oakleigh Thorne, chairman and CEO of eCollege.

From Syllabus News on February 11, 2003

eCollege Says Revenues, Earnings Rising

Course management system provider eCollege said revenues for the fourth quarter of 2002 were $6.3 million, up from $5.6 million for the fourth quarter of 2001. With that, the company reported that revenue for the year increased 19 percent to $23.7 million, from $19.8 million in 2001. For 2002, the Company's pre-tax earnings improved to a negative $251 thousand compared to a negative $7.7 million for 2001. The company also reported that for the 2002 fall term, the total number of student enrollments was 157,000 compared to 96,000 for the 2001 fall term. About 80,000 of the enrollments represented distance students, up from 58,000 distance students in the fall term last year. The number of distance courses rose to 4,900, a 27 percent increase over fall 2001.

From Syllabus e-News on October 9, 2001

eCollege Tops Colorado List for Fastest Growth

The fastest growing company in Colorado in the past year was edcuational courseware developer eCollege, according to the consulting firm Deloitte & Touche, which ranked state companies in its annual Colorado Technology Fast 50 listing. Denver-based eCollege, an application service provider that develops online campuses and courseware, had revenue growth of 10,996 percent in the last year. Qwest Communications was number two on the list. Five year-old eCollege has worked on online educational programs for Seton Hall University, the University of Colorado, the DeVry Institutes, the Kentucky Virtual High School, and Microsoft Faculty Center.

For more information, visit: http://www.ecollege.com 

From Syllabus News on September 24, 2002

eCollege Upgrades Synchronous Teaching Tool

Course management system provider eCollege said it improved its ClassLive Premium offering, a synchronous tool suite that provides real-time instructor-student sessions and record them for future use. The tool set integrates live audio/visual functionality typically found in collaboration software directly into the eCollege course management system. The new suite includes 'One-Way Broadcast Audio,' allowing an instructor's voice to be transferred over the Internet for office hours, online tutoring or live lectures with PowerPoint slides. 'Two-Way Audio' enables students and instructors to speak to each other and in groups without additional conference call technology. 'Synchronized Archives' enables ClassLive sessions to be played back as a streaming video.

From Syllabus@101communications-news.com on November 20, 2001

eCollege Ranked as 54th Fastest Growing Tech Firm

Learning software developer eCollege has been listed as the 54th fastest growing company in North America on Deloitte & Touche Technology Fast 500, a ranking of the 500 fastest growing technology companies. The rankings are based on five-year percentage revenue growth from 1996-2000. eCollege's revenue grew 10,996 percent during the period. The fast 500 list is compiled from Deloitte & Touche's regional Fast 50 programs, nominations to the Fast 500, and public company database research. eCollege partners with colleges, universities, schools and corporations to design and build learning communities. eCollege's partners include National University; Seton Hall University; University of Colorado; DeVry University, Inc.; Kentucky Virtual High School; and Microsoft Faculty Center.
(Note from Bob Jensen:  The eCollege homepage is at http://www.ecollege.com/ .  Competitors are listed at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm and at http://inst.augie.edu/~gray/WBI.html.  Some competitors such as Pensare have ceased operations.

Connected Learning Solution:  WebCT  Update
Syllabus e-News, Resources, and Trends May 29, 2001

Partnership Provides Integrated Connected Learning Solution

SCT, WebCT, and Campus Pipeline, Inc.--the three companies that earlier joined forces to create the Product Integration Alliance--have announced the availability of their Connected Learning Solution. The Connected Learning Solution is a pro- duct suite that integrates all major campus technologies so that colleges and universities can improve student services, simplify and reduce the time to deploy technologies, and streamline administrative processes. The Connected Learning Solution combines information, systems, learning tools, on- line services, and communication tools through a single point of access for all campus constituents. It provides access to personalized information, online courses and other e-learning resources, administrative services, community information, and communication tools.

For more information, visit 
http://www.campuspipeline.com  or 
http://www.webct.com  or 
http://www.sct.com .

 

Since I began this threading document of authoring software, an excellent software information guide appeared on the web.  Go to http://www.ctt.bc.ca/landonline/evalapps.html

I maintain some threads on Blackboard at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/blackboard.htm 

Course Management System Demos from TLT SUNY --- http://tlt.suny.edu/cms.htm 

 

If you are interested in using a Course Management System (CMS) to support traditional classroom based courses there are many tools from which to choose. Course Management Systems offer different features and making a decision about which CMS product is right for you or your campus depends on many factors. One way to learn about these products is to take a test drive.  The links below will take you to the place on the website of the vendors of these products where you can see a demonstration or "try before you buy".  

Angel	Eduprise	Intralearn	Topclass
Blackboard  e-College	FirstClass	Quickplace	Virtual U
e-College e-Education	Prometheus   (Now owned by Blackboard)	Toolbook II Instructor and Click2Learn	WebCT

From Syllabus News on April 9, 2002

eCollege Offers Giveaway of On-Campus Platform

eCollege, a provider of software and services for distance learning programs, said it would make an on-campus platform free to institutions that could enroll large numbers of students in distance learning programs. In announcing the program, eCollege chairman Oakleigh Thorne, said, "We understand that while an institution's distance program ... is a profit center, on-campus supplements that enhance existing curriculum ... are often a cost center. Since we are paid by the enrollment in distance programs, our business increases as our customers grow their programs. As a result, we think it makes sense for us to add the on-campus application at no extra cost for institutions that are committed to significant distance programs." The offer is effective now for classes beginning this fall.

For more information, visit: http://www.eCollege.com 

---

Harvard Business Online Updates Manager Software

Harvard Business Online, a subsidiary of Harvard Business School Publishing, released the lastest version of a support tool for managers. Harvard ManageMentor 5.0 adds five modules to its core topics covering: Managing Crises, Marketing Essentials, Becoming a Manager, Laying-off Employees, and Dismissing an Employee. The core package, dubbed "just-in-time performance support," provides online practical information on challenges faced by business managers. In the module covering dismisals, for example, the company said it helps "managers conduct a dismissal properly and respectfully." Harvard Business School Publishing is a wholly-owned, not-for-profit subsidiary of Harvard University.

Prometheus is a course delivery system used by Fathom and other online major course sites --- http://www.prometheus.com/ 

The George Washington University developed Prometheus in answer to the need for an easy-to-use, scalable enterprise-wide learning platform designed to allow customization for faculty, administrators, and students.

Prometheus partners have access to the Community Source code allowing developer collaboration, feature flexibility, and infinite customization.

Partners are free to private label the Prometheus platform creating the look and feel they choose.

Prometheus' web form-driven format walks faculty through course creation and content import quickly and easily—reducing training time and conserving resources.

Based on a ColdFusion application layer, Prometheus is inherently scalable and compatible with Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server databases. Data is not locked away in a proprietary database allowing for seamless integration with existing back office data management systems.

Here is a list of SUNY Colleges and the CMS Products they use

As you will notice from the list of CMS products in use at SUNY  that three products, Blackboard, TopClass and WebCT are most commonly used.  In many ways this reflects general trends in CMS use in higher education. However, recently Blackboard and WebCT have seen vastly increasing adoption, whereas many colleges have shifted away from TopClass as WBT (makers of the product) have shifted their focus to corporate clients.  Prometheus is gaining some attention recently and is used by a few dozen higher education institutions, most prominently George Washington University, Vanderbilt, and NYUonline.

From Syllabus News on January 15, 2002

Blackboard to Acquire Prometheus from GW University

Blackboard Inc. said it would take over the Prometheus course management system from its developer, George Washington University. The agreement provides Prometheus, which had grown into a free-standing software development business at GWU, expanded resources to service partner universities and staff. The partners noted that about 30 percent of Prometheus' 65 university licensees run one of the three systems in Blackboard's e- Education suite -- Blackboard 5: Learning System; Blackboard 5: Community Portal System; and Blackboard: Transaction System. Blackboard was founded in 1997 at Cornell University and has become the largest e- education enterprise software company in the market.

Bob Jensen's threads on Blackboard are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/blackboard.htm 
Prometheus is the software engine used by many of the largest distance education providers such as Fathom.

A Great Summary of Web Instruction Resources 
Sharon Gray, Instructional Technologist --- http://inst.augie.edu/%7Egray/ 
Augustana College, 2001 Summit Ave., Sioux Falls, SD  57197
gray@inst.augie.edu, 605-274-4907 
For GREAT comprehensive listing of Web Instruction Resources, go to http://inst.augie.edu/~gray/WBI.html

Various kinds of technology partnership alternatives (between vendors and schools/faculty) are summarized by Oblinger et al. as follows::