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 21st Century (including a
section of Knowledge Portals)
Conversations by Phone with
a Knowledge (Audio) Portal
Online
versus Onsite Universities in the 21st 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
Question
How can you best publish books, including multimedia and user interactive books,
on the Web?
Note that interactive books may have quizzes and examinations where answers are
sent back for grading.My Answers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
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 20th 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
Question
What are the supposed Top 10 and the Top 100 e-Learning tools, at least in
England?
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 21th
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
Angel Learning Management Suite and ePortfolio
Among the newer software for course management and authoring is Angel
Learning Management Suite and ePortfolio---
http://angellearning.com/
Other eLearning and course management alternatives are listed by year at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_virtual_learning_environments
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.
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.
2006
2005
- OLAT
4.0 was introduced with many new features like the integration of
Jabber,
RSS,
SCORM and
an extension framework that allows adding code by configuration and
without the need to patch the original code set.
2004
- The
Sakai Project founded, promising to develop an open source
Collaboration and Learning Environment for the needs of higher
education.
- OLAT
3.0 released. This is the first
OLAT
release that is entirely written in
Java as a
result of the
OLAT rebuild project initiated in 2002.
2002
- Moodle
version 1.0 released in August
- Fle3
version 1.0 released in February - the first Open Source version of FLE
software
- The MIT Sloan School of Management migrates ACES to OpenACS 4.0,
thereby creating the first instance of .LRN (1.0).
- Start of the
OLAT
rebuilt project. The goal of this project was to rebuilt the
LAMP based
LMS on a scalable, save and fast
J2EE based
architecture that supports campus wide e-learning.
2001
- The
Bodington system released as open source by the University of Leeds,
U.K.
-
LON-CAPA is first used in courses at Michigan State University.
- version 2.0 of COSE is launched after further funding from the
JISC
- The MIT Sloan School of Management adopts ACES 3.4 (internally named
SloanSpace) as their course management system.
2000
- Blackboard Inc. application for patent is filed. Patent claim covers
a number of features of VLEs, including network-based architecture,
course and role based access via login, electronic assignment
submission, online assessment, synchronous and asynchronous
communications, and self-registration.
-
Blackboard Inc. acquires MadDuck Technologies LLC, developers of
"Web Course in a Box".
- ETUDES 2.5 is demonstrated in March at TechEd 2000 in Palm Springs,
California. At or prior to this relase, ETUDES included a number of
features of VLEs, including course and role based access via login,
electronic assignment submission, online assessment, and synchronous and
asynchronous communications. The system is in use by a number of
community colleges in California, including Foothill, Miracosta, and Las
Positas.
- * "The Political Economy of Online Education" (Onrain Kyouiku no
Seijikeizaigaku) by Kimura Tadamasa was published in May, with the
rubric "this book examines the role of secondary education in the new
information society, from a a variety of perspectivies - socialogy,
psychology, and human resource management - using concrete examples of
online education in educational environments."
ISBN 4757140177. NTT publishing. Tokyo. (Japanese).
- The MIT Sloan School of Management launches the first production
version of ACES 3.4 with a pilot of 8 Fall 2000 classes.
- Northern Virginia Community College's Extended Learning Institute
begins using Blackboard after having previously used a variety of other
products for Internet-based course delivery, including
Lotus Notes (1995),
FirstClass (1996-1999),
Serf (1997-1999), and Allaire Forums (1999ff.) for its engineering
degree program and other courses
[1]; NVCC also used WebBoard (1999ff) and Web Course in a Box
(1998ff), prior to beginning its use of Blackboard. (Sener, J. Bringing
ALN into the Mainstream: NVCC Case Studies. In: Bourne, J. and Moore, J.
(Eds.), Online Education: Learning Effectiveness, Faculty Satisfaction,
and Cost Effectiveness, Volume 2. Needham, MA: Sloan Center for OnLine
Education, 7-30, 2001.)
There were earlier examples of
companies that failed to grasp the long-term importance of CPV analysis.
|
I wrote this module for Barry Rice and
others who have been long-time users of classroom response pads that allow the
instructor and students to interact in class and display outcomes on a computer
projection. Barry and various other schools used both HyperGraphics course
management software and HyperGraphics interactive response pads in the early
1990s..
What became of HyperGraphics/Cyberclass?
In 1990, I spent most of my
days authoring course materials in HyperGraphics from HyperGraphics
Corporation in Denton, Texas. HyperGraphics was one of the most
innovative course authoring and course management systems ever developed
for DOS. Various accounting publishers such as Prentice-Hall and
South-Western College Publishing developed HyperGraphics supplements for
leading accounting textbooks. The leading Hypergrahics' competitors at the time
were Quest for DOS systems and Authorware for Mac systems.
When Windows replaced DOS as
the leading operating system, the HyperGraphics version for Windows
never was efficient or effective. HyperGraphics Corporation
changed its name to CyberGraphics Corporation and its focus to serving
up HTML courses for colleges and universities.
In recent years, CyberGraphics changed its name and its customer base to include more K-12
schools than colleges and universities. The company seems to
thrive on supplementary online teaching and testing modules. One new name
became eInsruction Corporation. Now the company seems to be called
IV Systems at http://www.ktc.net/IVsystems/new.htm
|
iv
systems, located in Denton Texas,
specializes in creating custom new media products through a variety
of mediums.
|
iv systems
clientele include:
- The Internet Mailbox Company
- International Focus Press
- Briscoe Hall inc.
- Shara Wright
- Homemade Mesquite Frames
- Aspirations Travel
- HyperGraphics
- eInstruction
- Domissions.com
|
- Olufsen's Gifts and Gourmet
- Profit Line
- Institute for Christian Economics
- Kerrville Telephone Co.
- College Life
- CyberClass
- Sprint
- The Yankee Group
- WebLink Wireless
|
The number of colleges served
has shrunk somewhat in this era of heavy competition from Blackboard,
WebCT, eCollege, Eduprise, Campus Pipeline, SmartThinking.co, Tutor.com,
DegreeNavigator, etc. But the number of K-12 schools using eLearn
systems has soared. You can read a listing of users at
What's happening to eCollege?
In a move that could have many reverberations
in higher education, the publishing giant
Pearson announced a deal Monday in which it will purchase eCollege,
which offers course management and other
services for distance education. Many analysts predict that the move
will create a major competitor to Blackboard in course management and
some say the sale could presage more consolidation among producers of
software and content for higher education.
Scott Jaschik, "Shaking Up the Market,"
Inside Higher Ed, May 15, 2007
---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/05/15/ecollege
Jensen Comment
Back is the early 1990s, Barry Rice and I were both inspired heavily by
a company called HyperGraphics that authored a complete course
management and delivery system in DOS (before the days of Windows and
Macs). My classes were small at Trinity University, but Barry had
some large basic accounting lecture classes at Loyola College of
Maryland. He made active use of hardware from HyperGraphics that
allowed each student in a large lecture to respond to questions in
class. At first all these response pads were hard wired to student
desks. Later they became wireless. HyperGraphics changed
names over the decades but is still in the business of selling wireless
response pads. Now the classroom "Clickers" are replacing the
older style wireless response pads. You can read more about the
history of this type of thing at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm
Read how clickers are used at the University of Wisconsin ---
http://www.news.wisc.edu/11142.html
A pilot test at Iowa State University (where students buy them for $16 at the
bookstore) is reported at
http://www.iastate.edu/Inside/2005/0610/clickers.shtml
Canada's usage is reported at
http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050510.gtclickermay10/BNStory/Technology/
One source for clickers is
http://www.smartroom.com/
One noteworthy new product of
eLearn is a newer type of classroom response pad system called Classroom
Performance System (CPS)--- http://www.einstruction.com/estart/new/cps.cfm
The Classroom
Performance System (CPS) is an Infrared response system that supports
real-time interaction in the traditional classroom. CPS allows you to
ask questions and get immediate responses from every student. This
system also tracks the results of individual students and instantly
grades homework, quizzes, and tests. Extremely affordable, CPS is a
revolutionary system that will engage your students and free you from
mundane administrative tasks!
The
listing of colleges using the CPS system is shown at
http://www.einstruction.com/estart/new/cpsschools.cfm#Post Secondary Schools
|
Authorware and eLearning Studio from Macromedia
|
Update on Authorware from Syllabus e-News on August 21, 2001
New Products Provide Courseware Development
Macromedia recently announced its eLearning
Studio, which combines the new Authorware 6, the visual authoring
product for creating interactive, e-learning applications, with Flash
5 and Dreamweaver 4 to provide an authoring solution for e- learning.
eLearning Studio is compatible with ADL, AICC, and IMS, as well as
traditional Web standards. New features in Authorware 6 include One
Button Publishing for the Web and CD-ROM, enhanced external media
support, drag-and-drop media synchronization, and support for
streaming MP3 audio and XML parsing. Both products are expected to be
available in September. Free templates and product extensions are
available on Macromedia Exchange at http://www.macromedia.com/exchange
.
|
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:
|
Full-Line (Course
Management, Interactive, Chat Room, Multimedia, Web Authoring) Internal
System Web Authoring Shell Alternatives That Do
Not Provide External Servers or
Course Advertising, Registration, and Billing Services:
|
Full-Line (Course
Management, Interactive, Chat Room, Multimedia, Web Authoring) Internal
System Web Authoring Shell Alternatives That Do
Not Provide External Servers or
Course Advertising, Registration, and Billing Services:
The majority of the above vendors have
just begun providing external-system options at the time of of this
writing. Note that
some publishing firms will assist internal-system webmasters in
installing the software. For example, see McGraw-Hill
Learning Architecture (MHLA) for TopClass and WebCT discounted
installations on campus servers. Macmillan
Publishing has partnered witth TopClass. |
The majority of the above vendors have
just begun providing external-system options at the time of of this
writing. Note that some publishing firms will assist
internal-system webmasters in installing the software. For
example, see McGraw-Hill
Learning Architecture (MHLA) for TopClass and WebCT discounted
installations on campus servers. Macmillan
Publishing has partnered witth TopClass. |
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".
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::
Distance Education and Its Challenges: An Overview, by
D.G. Oblinger, C.A. Barone, and B.L. Hawkins (ACE, American Council on
Education Center for Policy Analysis and Educause, 2001, Page 17)
http://www.acenet.edu/bookstore/pdf/distributed-learning/distributed-learning-01.pdf
| Service |
Providers |
| Online Application
Consulting |
Embark.com --- http://www.embark.com/
College.net --- http://www.embark.com/
XAP --- http://www.xap.com/
(For other application
consulting alternatives, go to http://www.awrsd.org/oak/Guidance/college_application_sites.htm
)
(For course finders, to to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm
) |
| Campus-based portals |
Campus Pipeline --- http://www.campuspipeline.com/
Jenzabar --- http://www.jenzabar.com/
Studentonline.com --- http://www.studentonline.com/
(For other alternatives, go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm
) |
| Online procurement |
Ariba --- http://www.ariba.com/
CommerceOne --- http://www.commerceone.com/
Freemarkets --- http://www.freemarkets.com/ |
| Online course
delivery |
Web CT --- http://www.webct.com/
Blackboard --- http://www.blackboard.com/
Eduprise --- http://www.eduprise.com/
eCollege --- http://www.ecollege.com/
(For other alternatives, go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm
) |
| Supplemental content |
PinkMonkey.com --- http://www.pinkmonkey.com/
CliffNotes.com --- http://www.cliffs.com/
Thinkwell.com --- http://www.thinkwell.com/
|