::fibreculture:: WebCT, Open Source and Beyond

[Tom Worthington]

At 08:02 AM 8/9/2005, Andrew Murphie wrote:
>... where are the big, major crits of WebCT and proprietary software and 
>systems in education? ...

I have nothing against WebCT, I use it at the ANU and it works fine. I must 
admit I only use it in a minimalist fashion, with my content residing on 
external web pages. But ANU have done a clever simple audio recording 
interface to easily allow lectures to be recorded and podcast (as the 
fashionable term for digital audio) on WebCT 
<http://sts.anu.edu.au/digital_audio/index.php>.

That said, if I was looking to set up a new system I would consider open 
Source products, such as Atutor <http://www.atutor.ca/> in place of WebCT. 
Atutor claims to support the same content packaging standard as WebCT (I 
haven't tried it). Atutor also places emphasis on accessibility. They did 
this for the disabled, but I found it just about works on a mobile phone.

As a gimmick I designed my lecture notes on web design to work on a mobile 
phone <http://www.tomw.net.au/2005/wd/index.html#udf>. The students can 
read the notes on a phone and listen to the audio at the same time (I don't 
know if anyone does).



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                http://www.tomw.net.au/
Director, ACS Communications Tech Board   http://www.acs.org.au/ctb/
Visiting Fellow, ANU  http://cs.anu.edu.au/people.php?StaffID=140274