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There's no real commercial competition anymore in the field with WebCT gone

I took a course using WebCT last year:www.WebCT.com

I prefer Moodle, which I use in my teaching.

WebCT Vista?

http://www.webct.com/products/viewpage?name=produc ts_vista

There are lots of other products that use the name Vista and were out long before the name decision. At my college we use a class management system called WebCT Vista. http://webct.com/software/viewpage?name=software_v ista

WebCT has a widely used CMS for on-line courses named Vista http://webct.com/software/viewpage?name=software_v ista
which has been out for at least a few years. WebCT is used heavily in Higher Education for on-line course delivery.

At least they had SOME course notes (rarely our years) online, on an archaic version of WebCT (bellugh)... just as long as you didn't upgrade to incompatible IE6 (which the University used)...

I did a quick search on /. and didn't find it, but I thought I saw an article awhile back saying jobs have finally started coming back up.

One thing I've noticed in the US though is a lot of education-related companies are hiring. If you're in the Minneapolis area (and would like a job), just look at the listings for my company - some of these have been there since July!

As it stands, a lot of brick and mortar based colleges are expanding into online ventures - with that comes the need for a knowledgeavle staff to support that industry, might be a good time to start learning some online courseroom software and see if you can't get lucky!

so what's wrong w/webct now??? that thing's out of control w/holes...my old school was so unprotected you could log in to the sql database that it ran on.

It seems that any online collaboration system, for any purpose, is going to require a similar feature set. A system which allows students and teachers to collaborate online is going to be very similar to a system which allows software developers to collaborate online. What is needed is a generic online collaboration system that can be altered to fit the needs of it specific user set. Preferably, one that is not proprietary.

Note that teaching a course fully online is very different from using the Web to supplement a course being taught in person. I have found that the Web tools available make it easier to extend the scope of the course beyond the classroom, and to facilitate further dialogue and discussion.

I've come to think of online education as Lowest Common Denominator Learning (LCDL). I've had instructors who value face-to-face interaction and the "art" of teaching admit that the college is moving more and more classes to the online format because it's cheaper to run.

My reaction after all the online courses I've taken:

• The WebCT interface, as used by my school, tends to be clunky; many, many instructors enable all the WebCT elements (Discussion, Mail, Chat, Calendar, Lecture, etc.) but only use 2 or 3 of them.
• Online classes tend to fall in the pattern of "read this week's chapter in book-do related lab or chapter review-take chapter quiz-repeat next week."
• This predictable pattern tends to preclude discussion or chat sessions other than occasional homework questions or clarifications of assignments or the syllabus.
• Instructors' technical writing skills make or break the class: The effectiveness of their "lecture" or answers to questions depends solely on their ability to write well (whereas f2f classes allow room for dynamic speakers, a variety of visual aids, and easier/dynamic student involvement & interaction).
• Online classes can drift into a sense of disconnectedness or inconsistency, meaning I don't get that "aha!" moment of understanding the essential concepts that I often get in face-to-face learning.

Interestingly, the best class I've taken online -- which I'm taking now -- is a Perl scripting class. It's only 1 credit hour, 3 weeks. Why?

• The short duration means something's due every other day! This makes the class feel very focused.
• The quizes and labs are very short and to-the-point but still challenging enough to keep my attention but not burn me out.
• There's not a lot of reading between labs -- the instructor "chunks" the information into very digestable bits
• It also helps that the course has a narrow focus (Perl for sysadmins) and sense of urgency (short duration).

Okay, that was waaay more than $0.02!

CSU Chico in northern California has an online education program for distance students. We used to use satellite based tv for students that were in other areas, but we recently switched to using streaming video. The software package we use is called HorizonLive, and the actual teaching material is presented through WebCT. The sites themselves, if you want to look, are live.csuchico.edu and online.csuchico.edu. They give a quick and easy way for professors to teach (by streaming video, and the minimum speed requirements are 28.8 kbps w/Real Video), a way to interact (live chat), and that's just during the class. All classes are archived as well so students can watch the classes again and again if necessary. There are also bulletin boards, private messages, calendars, online testing, and more. In a nutshell, it gives people who would otherwise never have a chance at getting a degree a chance.

Fall of 2000 was our second test semester, and the first semester we dropped satellite testing. We offer over thirty classes now, with more coming next semester. You can go to either URL and test out the system, but hurry, the semester ends on Friday :)

What do I think of it? I think it's great, and if the classes available at this time were classes that I needed, I would take them. Many students on campus take classes that are both WebCT and in person classes, and professors just use WebCT to give tests and post notices and give students a place to interact. With private email, it also makes it very easy for the professor to email everyone in the class. What I also like about the idea is it gives people flexibility in the classes--if you don't want to go to class this morning, don't. Watch the archive. Sleep in until 3 and check your WebCT mail for information on the test. Use the bulletin board to ask someone what you missed. It not only gives people opportunity to go to college when they might not otherwise be able to, but it gives them the flexibility in doing so that many would desire.

I've worked a a couple schools and colleges and have run into this question before.

In one college we started running WebCT (www.webct.com)for 100 distance education classes. This was developed by a college in Canada, and it worked pretty well for what we needed, and was somewhat setup for multimedia. The server ran on Linux/BSD/Unix (NT support was coming) as Perl and C scripts, and the group at WebCT said had pretty good support, not that we had many problems. There was even talk of a DEC Alpha port. WebCT has most of what you are looking for, you would just need a streaming media server. There are yearly fees for WebCT, but they are not that bad.

Another bigger college I worked at went with FirstClass for oncampus classes, and a few departments started using WebCT for Distance Ed classes. FirstClass is expensive!

The K-12 Public school district I now work for is currently using AUC ( http://auc.sourceforge.net ) to support students learning. This is an open sourced free solution that has decent mailinglist support. The OpenSource part is nice for making minor modifications. Also 50% of the suggestions end up in the next release.

Indeed a good question to ask before purchasing anything...

And remember that not all learners are /. readers...or are yours? And will all of them be? I say this because someone suggested IRC for example. I wouldn't want to use IRC for an average distance learner...and think of the requirements you just layed on.

Distance learning has usually been a failure, and probably will be until technology changes drastically (like really fast broadband access in all the students' homes).

There's some truth to this, but it's also a bad generalization. All teaching/learning involves an instructor, resources (texts etc.), tools for delivery (your voice, a microphone, the web etc.), and an objective. I have had correspondence courses that I deemed useless. My 1,000 student section of history 202 was pitiful while I learned a great deal out of the independent study 201 course where I read at my own pace and did everything correspondence. Teaching and learning is about leveraging the tools and resources to meet your objectives. In some cases, clear objectives lack...and no matter what tools you use, you're screwed! Oh...and then there's learner motivation...which can be killed by too-hard-to-use technology/delivery systems, boring professors, dull material, immaturity etc. Hence the reason technology alone or 'distance learning' alone shouldn't be blamed. Check this out.

Anyway...technologies...especially for Linux?

• WebCT - A course development, delivery and management server. Linux version available
• Sorenson - Desktop video conferencing...Sorry, No Linx though.
• Mimio - Whiteboards etc. Linux...Dunno
• W3C - They do web stuff

Galego

If the distance education was for Computing science or other "text based" subjects I wouldn't have gone that way - I would have invested in a Web based system such as WebCt(or for that matter written my own =)). Just my 2 cents worth =)
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We also use WebCT at Minnesota State University Moorhead for online testing, quizzing, chat, BBS, and grading.

We are currently running version 3.1.3 on a Dell Poweredge 2400 running RH 6.2 and software raid. The software runs very well on Linux and has been extremely stable in comparison to our old WinNT 4.0 SP6 system running version 2.2.

Running WebCT on Linux has allowed us to integrate the system with existing systems on campus such as email with very little hassle, something we couldn't accomplish using WinNT 4.0.

I have also heard of blackboard but never used it.

WebCT does offer a free trial of their software and it's extremely simple to install and to get running. You can download their software at http://v3trials.webct.com/freetrial/

Blackboard requires a registration keycode to use their software (no free trial) but you can find their site at http://www.blackboard.com/

Here at Marietta College we use WebCT for our "course management system." It doesn't do the live video, but it does do online lessons, chats, quizzes, and grades. If you need to, you can replace their apache with your own custom compile so you can add php, ssl, or what not. Perhaps live video support can be added this way? However, a simple link on the course page to a realvideo server might be simpler.

It can run on Linux, and people connect to it with a normal web browser.

The downside is that it is commercial, but usually the institution wants something commercial anyway. Check it out at http://www.webct.com.

WebCT isn't free but it is really really cheap for schools. If your looking for someone to host your WebCT system or want to integrate something else with it email me. WebCT can do so much more when it is properly integrated with a current version of the Apache webserver.