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LMS Evaluation Report

show details | show criteria descriptions

Products

WebCT Vista 1.2

WebCT Inc.: http://www.webct.com/

Last major evaluation update: Dec '02

strong points

  • appealing look-and-feel
  • easy to use for admins, designers, tutors and students
  • powerful communication tools
  • numerous powerful student tools: i.e. search tool, context sensitive help
  • efficient file handling due to integrated file manager with WebDAV support
  • numerous flexible authentication models supported
  • large institutions and consortia can hierachically organize groups, courses, sections etc.
  • good documentation

weaknesses

  • severe usability issues: can't copy-paste URLs, no browser bookmarks, browser's 'back' and 'reload' button don't work
  • less severe usability issues: incomplete font scaling, difficult printing
  • limited SDK - limited extensibility. End users can't program custom 'components' or custom quizz types.
  • limited layout control
  • incomplete or missing support for IMS-QTI, IMS-CP and SCORM
  • not backwards compatible with WebCT 3.x (missing tools: no compile, no student presentations, english interface language only)

Student's Environment

Student's Environment
Ease of Use
The environment has an appealing look-and-feel. The navigation is intuitive, except for the issues mentionned below.

Many functions, that browsers offer for common web pages don't work

  • no browser bookmarks
  • can't refer to content pages with URL (i.e. can't copy/paste and send an URL by email)
  • good font scaling capabilities with Mozilla but limited with IE
  • back button often doesn't work as expected
  • reloading the current page takes the browser to the course homepage
Compliant with common web technology
Functional environment
Many useful and easy to use student tools are available: excellent search engine, online help system, page annotations (also printable), to-do list. A powerful calendar tools allows to make private and shared public entries, and entries can be compiled and printed.

Another useful tool is the private file manager, that allows to store arbitrary files and organize them in folders.

The system navigation aids are intuitive to use. However, the browser's navigation function often don't work (bookmarks, back button, copy-paste URL)

In the discussions forums and emails the students can also use a HTML and a math formula editor (math formulas can't be printed however).

in content pages kann man die grösse des linken frames zwar anpassen, aber es springt bei einem seitenwechsel wieder auf die urprüngliche grösse zurück.

Tutoring and Didactics
Ease of use
As other parts of the WebCT system, the tutoring tools are fairly easy to use.

Estimated introductory training required for a typical tutor to be able to use the basic tutoring tools: 2 hours

The tracking and reporting functions are not implemented in version 1.2

Communication
The communication tools are a strong point of Vista. They are easy to use and offer all the necessary functions.

Asynchronous communication tools are: discussion forums, local mails that optionally can be forwarded to common mail address, announcments at group/institution/course/section levels. Any user can use a web based html editor and a formula editor (both applets) in the discussions and emails.

Synchronous tools are: 'who's online' tool, Chatroom and shared whiteboard, all implemented as a Java applets.

Students management
Various different enrollment models are available.
Activity tracking
The activity tracking covers: the tools that were used, summary of student activity, course components used, top entry and exit pages or tools, most viewed content pages and student tracking.

Course Developement
Ease of Use
A course structure is entirely built using the web-based structure editor. It is easy and intuitive to use. The basic course structure and navigation concept can't be changed. The advantage of this is, that new courses with consistent navigation can be quickly conceived even by beginners, and that students always have the same familiar environment. The disadvantage is that experienced web designer can't set up a custom navigation and layout scheme.

The content can be edited in the web-based system using a built-in graphical HTML editor (Java-applet). This is useful for small corrections. However, voluminous content should be edited using an offline editor on the local computer, and uploaded as zip-archive or by WebDAV.

Estimated introductory training for a typical web designer to be able to use the basic editing features: 4 hours

Uploaded HTML pages are identified by their html title tag instead of by filename - author is required to rename pages either in WebCT or in html.

Crashed once, got error messages - not stable yet? Not yet possible to access text or xml files from Flash movies. -PMc

Flexible Development Framework
This is a weak point of Vista. There are just a few ways to extend the functions or to make it interoperable with 3rd party infrastructure:
  • user account data can be accessed over a command line interface or a web-based interface
  • any external html page can be integrated into a learning module of a course, that will be showed in a frame. A student still has the impression of beeing in a WebCT course, because all common navigations aids are available in the same browser window. However, the external resource has no possibility to access to data of the WebCT server.
Developers support
WebCT offer very complete manuals for administrators, designers, and tutors.

The online help is context sensitive, informative, searchable, hyper-linked and easy to navigate.

WebCT has set up a question and answer service (discussion forums) for administrators, designers and tutors. These forums are a useful source of informations.

Compatibility with common web authoring tools
Excellent WebDAV support! Sites can be defined, fully transparent file upload, download, synchronization, and file locking between multiple authors (tested with Dreamweaver).

A considerable drawback is that flash movies cannot read parameters from XML or text files in the same directory.

HTML files are parsed and modified, before they are delivered. All relative links to other pages, to images or to objects are prefixed by the server with an absoulute URL path. This might cause problems, if relative links are coded in JavaScript, Flash etc.

eine hochgeladene Seite wird irgendwann geparst und verändert. Z.b ein tag wird so verändert original:

geparst:

ein link: original: geparst:
Assessment
WebCT offers a powerful and easy to use quizz enviroment, for the most important question types.

The quizz engine can't be customized or extended.

Support for e-learning standards
The current version of Vista has an incomplete support for upcoming standards and data formats.

Two import formats are currently available: IMS-CP (with numerous proprietary extensions) to import entire courses, and a subset of IMS-Enterprise to import user/student data.

Adaptable look-and-feel
Possibility to design and optionally lock down appearance for subordinate groups/courses in an institution.

The best way to define and adapt the look-and-feel of content pages is by using CSS. Relative CSS references are supported.

Basic possibilities to change the type and appearance of the environment. Colors and icons can be adapted, and (navigation)tool can be hidden and revealed. A custom institution logo can be displayed in the top left corner.

Multilinguality
in version 1.1, only english is supported as interface language (french and german language packs are promised to be available soon)
XML support
Native XML support for course contents is not available.
Migration of current WebCT courses
(not tested)

System & Administration
System management
[to be determined]
Administration
The authentication scheme is flexible enough, to integrate the user database in existing infrastructure. Five different authentication models are available. [SWITCH checks for compatibility with national AAI infrastructure]

The complete administration documentation is electronically available as PDF documents.

Flexible Licensing Model
yes
Technical Architecture
-