As of August 1st, 2008, the Edutech web site will no longer be updated. Edutech was funded by the Swiss Virtual Campus programme, which ended on July 31st, 2008. Some activities will be taken over by the e-Learning Services group at the SWITCH foundation.
Survey Details
Sections:
- Currently used software tools
- License Model Preferences
- Institutional e-Learning Strategy
- About Outsourcing of Services
Note: Date of data collection was May 2005.
Currently used software tools
These are the results to questions 1. Which online software are you hosting and supporting at your
institution?
and 3. Are you supporting and/or hosting online software according to the official e-learning no
strategy at your institution?
Tools ordered by usage with institutional support
| Tool | Installations | Strategic installations |
Courses | Students | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WebCT CE | 11 | 3 | 597 | 19332 | LMS |
| Moodle | 8 | 4 | 400 | 5300 | LMS |
| BSCW | 7 | 2 | 193 | 10000 | CSCW |
| Claroline | 5 | 3 | 372 | 3750 | LMS |
| Olat | 3 | 2 | 203 | 7020 | LMS |
| IBM/Lotus Groupware | 3 | 0 | 242 | 4600 | CSCW |
| Ilias | 3 | 2 | 153 | 4250 | LMS |
| WebCT Vista | 3 | 0 | 20 | 930 | CMS |
| Typo3 | 3 | 0 | 12 | 300 | LMS |
| IBM/Lotus LMS | 2 | 1 | 1735 | 6100 | LMS |
| Blackboard | 2 | 1 | 1202 | 4520 | CMS |
| Zope/Plone | 2 | 0 | 86 | 2600 | LMS |
| ELBA | 2 | 2 | 60 | 1800 | LMS |
| Postnuke | 2 | 0 | 10 | 400 | CMS |
| Educanet | 2 | 0 | 10 | 300 | LMS |
| Centra | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Conf |
| MyUniL | 1 | 1 | 200 | 6000 | CMS |
| Dokeos | 1 | 1 | 100 | 2000 | LMS |
click for larger view
Other products that are are not strategically used at a single institution are
Standard products: Ganesha, Lenya, Hyperwave, Marratech, Manixa, MS Sharepoint, Socratese, WebBoard, Jahia, sWiki, Mimerdesk, Obtree, Perseus, phpBB, Polycom, Rogator, Visio conférence, WebBoard, Webcorp2, WebTV.
Self-developed products: EVA, Fitting image, Flexiform, iLearn, Inteach/semaphore, Matching pair, more, Movie bench.
Tools ordered by usage as institution-wide strategical tool
| Tool | Installations | Strategic installations |
Courses | Students | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Moodle | 8 | 4 | 400 | 5300 | LMS |
| WebCT CE | 11 | 3 | 597 | 19332 | LMS |
| Claroline | 5 | 3 | 372 | 3750 | LMS |
| BSCW | 7 | 2 | 193 | 10000 | CSCW |
| Olat | 3 | 2 | 203 | 7020 | LMS |
| Ilias | 3 | 2 | 153 | 4250 | LMS |
| ELBA | 2 | 2 | 60 | 1800 | LMS |
| IBM/Lotus LMS | 2 | 1 | 1735 | 6100 | LMS |
| MyUniL | 1 | 1 | 200 | 6000 | CMS |
| Blackboard | 2 | 1 | 1202 | 4520 | LMS |
| Dokeos | 1 | 1 | 100 | 2000 | LMS |
| IBM/Lotus Groupware | 3 | 0 | 242 | 4600 | CSCW |
| Zope/Plone | 2 | 0 | 86 | 2600 | CMS |
| WebCT Vista | 3 | 0 | 20 | 930 | LMS |
| Postnuke | 2 | 0 | 10 | 400 | CMS |
| Typo3 | 3 | 0 | 12 | 300 | CMS |
| Educanet | 2 | 0 | 10 | 300 | LMS |
| Centra | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Conf |
click for larger view
Tools ordered by student usage (weighted usage: students multiplied by courses)
| Tool | Installations | Strategic installations |
Courses | Students |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WebCT CE | 11 | 3 | 597 | 19332 |
| IBM/Lotus LMS | 2 | 1 | 1735 | 6100 |
| Blackboard | 2 | 1 | 1202 | 4520 |
| Moodle | 8 | 4 | 400 | 5300 |
| BSCW | 7 | 2 | 193 | 10000 |
| Olat | 3 | 2 | 203 | 7020 |
| Claroline | 5 | 3 | 372 | 3750 |
| MyUniL | 1 | 1 | 200 | 6000 |
| IBM/Lotus Groupware | 3 | 0 | 242 | 4600 |
| Ilias | 3 | 2 | 153 | 4250 |
| Zope/Plone | 2 | 0 | 86 | 2600 |
| Dokeos | 1 | 1 | 100 | 2000 |
| ELBA | 2 | 2 | 60 | 1800 |
| WebCT Vista | 3 | 0 | 20 | 930 |
| Postnuke | 2 | 0 | 10 | 400 |
| Typo3 | 3 | 0 | 12 | 300 |
| Educanet | 2 | 0 | 10 | 300 |
| Centra | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
click for larger view
Note: In some questionnaires, either the number of students or the number of courses were missing. In such cases, a course:student ratio of 1:30 was assumed to fill the gap.
License Model Preferences
This section refers to question 2. Based on your experiences, do you have a particular preference for open source products / ... commercial products?
| Preference for ... | yes | rather yes | undecided | rather no | no |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ... open source product | 13 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| ... commercial product | 4 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 8 |
Summary of verbal comments
Advantages of OSS products
Most of the institutions who prefer OSS products claim the following advantages:
- A key advantage is the quality/cost ratio. OSS product are offering a sufficient or good quality at low costs. The total cost of ownership (TCO) have been considered and estimated by many institutions.
- OSS products are more flexible because they allow to add custom extensions and adaptions. Customizations and functional extensions can be implemented easily in reality, because the required know-how is available at the institutions.
- It is easier to perform tests and make test installations, because the software and documentations is readily available.
- It is politcally easier to start a OSS based service, because no special funding is needed in the initial phase.
- It is easier to estimate long term costs because commercial vendors tend to change license fees and license models.
Further advantages that were less often mentioned:
- If they have the choice, institutions prefer to spend money on staff than on licenses.
- OSS products are more platform independent, and do not require Microsoft server infrastructure.
- It is easier to participate in communities of interest, because every serious OSS project has one.
Advantages of commercial products
Those who prefer commercial products claim the following advantages:
- Changing or migrating to OSS solutions is expensive.
- The overall experiences are satisfactory.
- The product quality is better than with OSS products.
- There is a preference to use lon-term proven products.
- A commercial solution is preferrable for long term, strategical deployments. For joint projects with industrial partners commercial products allow better interoperability and compatibility.
No specific preference
About 1/3 of the institutions explicitly mention, that the license model has a low importance, or no importance at all. It is stated that license costs can often be neglected, because their cost is typically below 20% of the TCO for a full service. The main selection criteria should be didactical quality, functionality and TCO.
Institutional e-Learning Strategy
This section refers to question 3. Are you supporting and/or hosting online software according to the official e-learning strategy at your institution?
| yes | no | |
|---|---|---|
| tools are offered according to linstitutional strategy | 16 | 2 |
Summary of verbal comments
Software related institutional e-learning strategies:
- There is an officially supported e-learning software portfolio. All teachers have to use these tools and services.
- There is an officially supported e-learning software portfolio. However, teachers can use other tools it they care about funding and support.
- There is no software portfolio. The strategy more generally focuses on functionality, sustainability, security and cost.
- Further strategical aspects:
- Use proven and well established software tools.
- Avoid monocultures and dependencies from a single software vendor. Promote at least two complementary software tools.
- Only use tools that allow import and export of standards compliant content.
- Use the software with the best TCO.
- The institutional e-learning services must be very easy to use. There is no administrative overhead, the pedagogical scenarios can be understood easily and the technical tools do not require more than an hour of introductory training for the designers.
- The strategically selected platform should be useful not only for teaching, but also for research, (industry) projects and institutional services.
- All content that was developed at the institution should be available to others (open content initiatives)
About Outsourcing of Services
Hosting or Service Demand
This section refers to question 4. Is your institution interested in using one or more online software that is hosted on a national level?
| yes | can't tell | no | |
|---|---|---|---|
| national hosting | 14 | 0 | 5 |
| ... by SWITCH? | 13 | 2 | 4 |
| ... by other institution? | 7 | 1 | 11 |
Requested Service Types
This section refers to question 4.3 What type of national services would be useful for your institution?
| yes | can't tell | no | |
|---|---|---|---|
| hosting | 12 | 1 | 6 |
| training | 8 | 0 | 11 |
| support for competence centers | 12 | 0 | 7 |
| end user support | 6 | 0 | 13 |
| other | 6 | 0 | 0 |
Requested Tool Categories
This section refers to question 4.4 Which of the following online software types, would you be interested to use as outsourced services?
| yes | can't tell | no | |
|---|---|---|---|
| LMS | 11 | 0 | 8 |
| Groupware | 3 | 0 | 16 |
| Conferencing | 13 | 0 | 6 |
| Testing | 6 | 2 | 11 |
| Content repository | 12 | 2 | 5 |
| other (AAI, Wiki, monitoring the market...) | 4 |
Hosting or Service Offerings
This section refers to question 5. Is your institution interested in offering hosting services to other Swiss Higher Education institutions?
| yes | rather yes | can't tell | rather no | no | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| can offer hosting | 6 | 6 | 1 | 3 | 3 |
Potentially Matching Offerings
This section refers to question 5.1-5.4 Please describe roughly the software and the possible level of support.
Potentially matching service offerings. We list services that already exist, or that might be set up in the future:
| Service at national level (SWITCH) | Service at regional or institutional level | |
|---|---|---|
| LMS | WebCT Vista | WebCT CE, Olat, Moodle, ELBA |
| Communication | Breeze, Marratech | Centra |
| other | AAI | products that are offered, but not specifically requested: MS Sharepoint, EVA, matching pair, Flexiform, Fitting image, movie bench |
Summary of verbal comments
General interest
The majority of the institutions are basically interested in outsourcing a part of their e-learing software portfolio. The expectation is that centralized services are robust, readily available and economically interesting. Some institutions do have concrete needs and are ready to use existing services. As service provider, SWITCH at a national level is preferred.
Reservation
Despite of the interest, many institutions are hesitating to make binding statements, because there is still lacking experience with using outsourced services for this type of software. Institutions fear, that centralized services might lead to more difficult decision procedures. Adaptions and extensions of a service would have to be decided by the consortium - while some of the partners might have diverging interests.
Financing
National services should be funded at a national level. About ¼ of the institutions are worried, that a national initiative could take away funds from local developments. They prefer to spend their funds locally in the own institution.
Offer
With respect to offering services to other partners, the institutions are more hesitating. They are generally open to allow other institutions to use existing software at a low scale for free - for smaller projects and without guaranteeing the availability of the service. There are just three institutions who are offering paid services under a SLA (service level agreement). A handful of other institutions are basically open to offer paid services after additional negotiations.