Connecticut Higher Ed Consortium Backs WebCT System
Connecticut’s largest universities made commitments to course management system
strategies recently. The Connecticut Community College system, Connecticut State
University, and the University of Connecticut, all chose WebCT Vista as the
backbone of their eLearning program in a collaborative purchase that \deal-makers
said will save the state an estimated $200,000.
Their single shared license for WebCT Vista will support eLearning activity
across the three independent systems and their 72,000 students. The state expects
savings by sharing a single software license, technology architecture, administration,
training programs and, in the near future, a repository for the learning objects
- such as Web pages, media clips, or curricula - that can be used to create
online courses.
Ed Klonoski, executive director of the Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium
(CTDLC) and the lead negotiator on the contract, called it a “precedent-setting,
far-reaching initiative to share information technology on a broad scale.”
The WebCT Vista will enable each school to develop a unique online identity.
Yet students moving through several institutions – i.e., a community college
graduate enrolling at a university - will experience a familiar basic system
as they move from school to school. Students will have online access to course
materials, assignments and assessments, and they will be able to use tools such
as e-mail, chat and threaded discussion.
Connecticut College Has Different Drummer: SCT Financial Aid
While only tangential to learning management, enterprise administrative systems
increasingly draw from common source data. Along those lines, Connecticut College
said it successfully implemented SCT Banner Financial Aid, the latest piece
in its rollout of the SCT administrative software suite. Lee Hisle, vice president
for information services and librarian of the college, said the system will
“provide the access to information that before was hidden inside the data processing
world.” The private college went live with the SCT Banner Finance, Advancement,
and Admissions applications in 2003. The SCT Banner Student application is expected
to be live in 2004. SCT Banner is based on the Oracle platform and built for
medium-to-large student enrollments.
Open Source CMS Grounded in ‘Constructionist Pedagogy’
A new open source course management system has made its debut, distinguishing
itself with a claim to a “strong grounding in social constructionist pedagogy.”
The Moodle developers describe the as a way a course can be developed within
“a social group constructing things for one another, collaboratively creating
a small culture of shared artifacts with shared meanings. When one is immersed
within a culture like this, one is learning all the time about how to be a part
of that culture, on many levels.”
“A very simple example is an object like a cup. The object can be used for
many things, but its shape d'es suggest some "knowledge" about carrying liquids.
A more complex example is an online course - not only do the "shapes" of the
software tools indicate certain things about the way online courses should work,
but the activities and texts produced within the group as a whole will help
shape how each person behaves within that group.”
Moodle runs without modification on Unix, Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Netware,
and other system that supports PHP. Data is stored in a single
database: MySOL and PostgreSQL are best supported, but it
can also be used with Oracle, Access, Interbase, ODBC, and
others. Moodle is available in 34 languages.
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MERLOT Partnership to Ease Faculty Course Development
MERLOT, the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning & Online Teaching,
has formed a partnership with U.K.-based Sentient, a provider of “learning resource
management systems,” to provide higher-ed institutions the ability to search
online learning objects within Sentient Discover v2.0. The product will enable
faculty members to embed traditional and electronic learning resources within
their resource lists, which eases the transition towards eLearning. Through
its architecture, Sentient Discover allows faculty members to search multiple
resource databases and embed links to such resources within the lists.
MERLOT (http://www.merlot.org)
is a cooperative that collects and makes freely available
high-quality online resources to improve learning and teaching
within higher education. Sentient Discover 2.0 will enable
MERLOT to bring its resources to where many faculty are composing
their online courses – in course management systems such as
WebCT and Blackboard, says the developers. Sentient DISCOVER
2.0 will also enable faculty to conduct “one-stop shopping”
for library, publisher, and MERLOT materials that students
will need for their online education.
“Our collaboration will enable faculty to effectively and efficiently conduct
their research for teaching materials,” said MERLOT executive director Gerry
Hanley. “Faculty can spend their time designing successful learning experiences
instead of conducting inefficient and unproductive searches for online curriculum.”
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