There are a number of good products which compete with WebCT. Like WebCT, each has its advantages and disadvantages. We have been told that WebCT stands up well to careful comparison and invite you to carefully evaluate all competing products. On our homepage, we have links to a number of comparative analyses which have been performed by independent institutions, like your own, in the process of choosing a tool. These may serve as a good starting point for your own comparison.
In addition to these comparisons, we would like to bring to your attention other aspects of WebCT that we feel may be factors in your decision-making process:
| Widespread use: In the first 16 months WebCT has been in business (to February 1,
1999), we have sold over 1200 licenses to institutions in over 33 countries.
Approximately one quarter of these were sold in the last 2 months of that period, and the
trend in our second year thus far suggests we will sell over three times the number of
licenses we sold in our first year. Our renewal rate for licenses is approximately 90%. A
license can range from one course to 1000 or more. Two state-wide licenses have been sold
and many more are in negotiation. We estimate that roughly 2 million students use WebCT.
According to all published numbers we have seen from our competitors, this would make
WebCT the most widely adopted course management tool by a significant margin, even though
some of the competing tools were available well before WebCT. |
| Publishers: WebCT has been chosen by many of the largest higher education publishers as
their tool to build web-based courses to complement their course textbooks. Most notably,
Prentice Hall, Harcourt Brace, John Wiley and Sons, Addison Wesley, W. W. Norton and
Course Technology are using WebCT to create online material to supplement their existing
textbooks. We hope to announce shortly that another of the remaining major publishers has
done the same. |
| Low Cost: Having begun as a university-based project, our goal is to charge just enough
to provide support, maintenance and continued development. We spend almost nothing on
marketing. Still, we have promised that we will not raise our licensing fees for existing
users by more than 5% per year (and currently have not raised them at all since licensing
began). WebCT has no investors and no debt. This allows us to keep our prices low and
still provide a high level of support and development. Keep in mind also that WebCT is
free to download, install and create courses. If you don't like WebCT or the course you've
created, you've spent some time but no money. A license is only required when you want
your students to use a course you've created. Also, beginning January, we will be
providing first-time users with free access to WebCT for one course, hosted on our server,
for up to 50 students. |
| Support: We take support very seriously. We have a support team that responds to support
questions in a friendly and prompt manner. Questions normally receive responses
within 1 working day and our goal is to provide same-day response in most cases. |
| Very active users' group: WebCT has a fantastic set of dedicated users who contribute
regularly to the "webct-users" mailing list. This is a very active list where
ideas are exchanged, suggestions are put forward, and bugs are reported. The WebCT support
team (as well as most of our employees) monitor this list and respond regularly. |
| Very broad and deep feature set. This is best evaluated by using WebCT, though some of
the comparative evaluations attempt to detail this. Beware of evaluations which make
statements such as "Has student tracking" or "Has online assessment."
There can be vast differences between shallow and deep implementations of these and other
features. We believe that the more you use WebCT, the more you will find that it exhibits
both breadth and depth of feature set. If you can, experiment yourself; if not, ask
someone who has used WebCT and other tools for a while. Failing both of these, check out
the user feedback on our web site. |
| Origin: WebCT is a tool built by instructors for instructors. It was built by
educators at the University of British Columbia as a tool to allow other educators without
a lot of time, resources or technical expertise to build sophisticated web-based learning
environments. The project lead, Murray Goldberg, won the university teaching prize in the
first year as a faculty member at UBC and has published in the area of the educational
effectiveness and student acceptance of web-based learning resources both in a distance
learning setting and as a supplement to lecture-based courses. Still, WebCT is
pedagogically neutral. Its goal is to provide a set of tools useful for a broad range of
teaching methodologies, yet make it easy to experiment with new techniques. |
| High Renewal rate. Nearly all (roughly 90%) of our licensees have chosen to renew their
licenses once expired and most have renewed for a larger number of users. |
| Language Translations. WebCT's student interface is available in many languages,
including English, Spanish, French, Dutch and Finnish, and more translations are planned. |
| IMS conformance. WebCT is a member of the Instructional Management System Project
(IMS), is tracking the standards effort closely, and is implementing those standards. We
believe that the IMS is going to play a significant role in the future of online
learning technologies and we are working hard to conform to the standards as they emerge. |
| Easy to get started: You can try out WebCT immediately on our web site. Additionally, you can download the WebCT software immediately for installation on a local server. Also, beginning January, we will be providing first-time users with free access to WebCT for one course, hosted on our server, for up to 50 students. WebCT has an online Quickstart wizard, as well as a more in-depth Getting Started tutorial document. It also has context-sensitive online help and a Minihelp feature which briefly explains how every screen within WebCT works. |
For any additions or corrections, please contact Marshall University's Center for Instructional Technology at citcomparison@marshall.edu.