August 31, 2005

Conference Presentations Online

The conference PowerPoints and papers are now available from WebCT at WebCT's conference presentations site.

Posted by kvl014 at 02:48 PM

July 25, 2005

Conference Summary

In this blog entry Kevin summarizes the major points from the conference and how they apply to the University of Saskatchewan WebCT installation.

The main points I got from the conference are as follows:

WebCT Vista 4 vs WebCT CE 6

  1. WebCT Vista 4 and WebCT Campus Edition 6 are really the same product. The only difference is licensing. Vista 4 is the complete package. Campus Edition 6 has been modularized into the basic system, plus four optional modules. (Learning Objects for sharing content between courses, Community Manager for having multiple administrative levels and enhancing the learning objects, Powerlinks Kit for writing our own custom integration software, Powersight Kit for detailed reporting)

  2. The cost of purchasing WeBCT CE 6 plus two modules is about the same as the cost for a Vista license. So if we decide we want two optional modules we may as well go for Vista.

  3. The base WebCT 6 system supports the IMS API for loading people, courses, and course enrollments. So we don't have to purchase any of the optional modules to obtain the level of integration we currently enjoy.

Integration and Plugin tools (Powerlinks):

  1. The "powerlinks kit" provides APIs that allows us to more tightly integrate WebCT with external applications. This API allows external applications to do anything that can be done through the web interface, like update the WebCT gradebook. We can also create our own additional tools for the WebCT toolkit. This could be very useful for some TEL projects. For example, we could build a WebCT tool that links students to our library system, or has direct links into the Computer Science iHelp system.

  2. Many companies are using the Powerlinks kit to integrate their products with WebCT. For example Horizon Wimba and Elluminate both add "audio chatroom" and other tools to WebCT which insructors can add to their courses exactly like any other WebCT tool. We do not need to purchase the powerlinks kit to use these products. We only need to purchase it if we want to do our own development.

  3. An exciting feature is that WebCT demonstrated support for the IMS Tools Interoperabity (IMS-TI) framework. This is an IMS standard way to build "plug in" tools that can be loaded into any Learning Management system. Using it is simple. Install the tool (on its own server or whatever). Then, load an IMS-TI XML file into WebCT. This automatically registers the tool in WebCT, provides administrator menus for the tool, makes the tool available in the WebCT list of tools, and provides designer options for the tools if necessary. As an example, they demonstrated loading tools built for SAKAI using the IMS-TI specification into WebCT. I see this as a way to have our cake and eat it too. Stay with WebCT as the main LMS, but still take advantage of development being done for Sakai and other systems.

U of S WebCT Upgrade

  1. Denise has a bunch of information about updated hardware requirements. We may need more powerful hardware than we initially thought (RAID 10 instead of RAID 5, more disk space, etc.)

  2. They recommend having a "backup database" which mirrors the production database. All statistics, file recovery, etc. are then done against this backup database. That allows us to do adminstrative work without impacting the production database. However, this increases our cost estimate for disk space, etc.

  3. All data is stored in the database. This means our existing method of virus scanning uploaded files won't work. We need to look at a virus scanning solution that will check inside Oracle databases.

  4. They have provided some excellent tools for moving courses from WebCT 4.1 to WebCT 6. I found it encouraging that this is done via an IMS export and import, showing their adherance to standards.

Should we get Vista instead?

  1. We need to decide how important the additional modules are to the University and are they worth the additional expense. If so, it may be better to upgrade to Vista 4 instead of WebCT CE 6.

  2. The "Powerlinks Kit" is essential to develop our own plug-in tools for WebCT. TEL projects (Music, Chemistry) have developed external evaluation tools that would benefit from integrating with the WebCT gradebook. There are also opportunities to integrate other department or institutional systems into WebCT (library, iHelp, etc.) We need the powerlinks kit to do this.

  3. The "Learning Objects Module" may help to address some of the issues surrounding a learning object repository for campus. It allows us to provide shared content which can be easily imported into other WebCT courses. Unfortunately, the current version does not have the full metatagging and does not support use by external applications, so it may not suit everyone's needs. Also, to really unlock its features you need to also get the "Community Manager".

  4. The "Community Manager" provides a way to share adminstrative tasks with department or college staff. We can have separate college or department templates, separate configuration settings, etc. This is useful for continuing education or STU courses. We could set up the system so that most sections are managed by SiRIUS. However, Continuing Education courses could be set up to allow their program administrators to manage the class lists themselves. The same could apply to some Extension courses, Saskatoon Theological Union courses, etc. Without this extension, we are limited to everyone sharing the same global settings (like we are now).

  5. Using the "Community Manager" with the "Learning Objects Module" allows us to share learning objects at different levels. We can have some objects shared only within a department, or only within a college. More importantly, we can set it up so that changes in the parent learning object automatically change the content in the individual course sections. Take TEL courses for example. We could have a learning object specifically on how students can use the services in the Extension Division (or Library, or whatever). This can be included in all Extension courses. If something changes, they change the learning object and all the courses are automatically updated. However, we only get this capability if we have both of these modules.

The Future:
WebCT listed several new features that will be coming out in future releases over the next year.

  1. WebCT 6.1 CE will be released in early September. That release will address the known issues in the existing system.

  2. WebCT 6.2 will be released about November or December. It will have the latest html editor tool (the one that works with Macintosh computers). It will also have support for crosslisted courses. The initial release doesn't support crosslisted courses.

  3. For WebCT's release next summer they intend to greatly enhance the learning objects module, with full metatagging, better searching, etc. Combine that with the Powerkits and the IMS export features and we might be able to build something that could be accessed by systems outside of WebCT.

  4. NExt summer they also intend to have an ePortfolio module. Students can pick their favorite assignments, quizzes, discussions, etc. from multiple courses and collect them together into one e-Portfolio to demonstrate their improved proficiency over time.

  5. Next summer they also intend to have full support for the IMS - Tool Interoperability capability built in. They demonstrated this already, but the IMS-TI standard is not finalized yet so they didn't include it in the current release.

In Summary
I think that WebCT got a lot right with this release.

  1. It has expanded its adherance international IMS standards for course content and quizzes.

  2. The "powerlinks" capability makes it much easier to integrate third-party applications seamlessly into WebCT.

  3. The Community Manager makes it much easier to administer the different course needs in different Colleges or departments.

  4. The Learning Objects manager makes it much easier to do ongoing maintenance of courses.

  5. The toolset enhancements make everything work much better

In the short term we may not have the funding to move to Vista. However, if we really want to use WebCT to its full potential on campus, we should seriously consider moving to Vista 4 in the future. Without those optional modules, we are greatly restricting many aspects of course development, tool integration, and site administration.

Posted by kvl014 at 09:37 AM

July 22, 2005

Friday 's Sessions

This installment talks about the last two sessions on Friday.

I apologise for taking so long to enter this update. For some reason Denise wanted her laptop back to fly home, so I didn't have my wireless internet access any more.

The first session was "Enhancing WebCT with Powerlink Partners". Once it got started, I realized this was actually a combination of two sessions I saw earlier, session "J-6" (Digital Content Offerings - Beyond e-Paks) and session "K-5" (Deter Plagiarism and Enhance Learning with Turnitin). So instead of staying around I went to check out the vendor displays again.

The second session, "Migrating Content to WebCT 6 Campus Edition" was much more useful and interesting. This session discussed the tools that WebCT has provided to simplify the transfer of course content from the old system to the new.

The first step is to install the latest service pak for WebCT 4.1 and the content migration utility. This provides new functionality to WebCT 4.1 so it can export data to WebCT 6.

There's two parts to the conversion. The first part is converting the "enterprise data" (user data, enrollments, the old WebCT 4.1 "Global Database"). The second part is to convert the course content. Admins can do either. Course designers can only move the course data.

The enterprise data should not be a problem for us. We'll probably use SSAM to re-populate the new server. We will only need to use the conversion utility for "non-nsid" usernames. There should be a lot less of these to convert because people no longer need test student accounts in WebCT 6.

Transferring the actual course content can be done as a command line batch job by the administrator, as a gui batch job by the administrator, or on a course by course basis using a gui wizard for the course designers. We'll have to examine this in more detail to find the best solution for us. All of these methods exports the course content to an IMS XML file that can be loaded into WebCT 6.

Once the couse is imported, a report is put in the course as a hidden text file. This report lists errors (things that couldn't be converted) as well as changes (things that have been moved or work differently). It is useful both as a log of what to check, and as a training tool for faculty to show them the new changes in WebCT 6.

Course content can be moved, but there is no way to move student work to the new WebCT system. This implies that we may need to keep a skeleton WebCT 4.1 server around for a year after the 4.1 server is "shut down", so we can handle recovery of student data for student appeals.

In summary, I was quite impressed with the conversion functinoality. We should have less problem converting courses to WebCT 6 than we had moving courses to our new "webct2" server from "webct2" during the Banner integration.

In our specific case, we'll need to do the following:


  1. Install and test the 6.1 server

  2. Integrate the 6.1 server with SSAM and populate the user database so it matches the 4.1 server

  3. Identify which "development" and "test" courses should be moved to the new server. We should take this opportunity to weed out any deadwood and only move courses that need to be moved.

  4. There is no need to move "active" courses. Those will be created as needed using Banner.

  5. Transfer the courses to the new system. The central administrators might choose in most cases to move the courses for the instructors. However, we could just create a blank course shell and let the instructors move the content themselves if they prefer.

  6. Remove (or hide) the transferred courss on the old server so that course developers won't be updating the wrong course.

One note about feeds from Banner. Apparantly Banner can only feed one WebCT system at a time. So, if we intend to run both systems in parallel for a year, we'll be able to feed one system directly from SiRIUS. However, we will have to use batch extracts from SiRIUS to populate the class lists in the other system. If we go live with WebCT 6 in May, then likely May we'll do the batch extracts for WebCT6 and leave WebCT 4.1 integrated, then switch that in September so that WebCT 6 gets the live feeds and WebCT 4.1 gets populated with the batch extracts.

For more information, refer to the WebCT 6 upgrade guide for administrators.

Posted by kvl014 at 10:41 AM

July 21, 2005

Thursday Evening

Supper, a science centre, and drinks in the lounge.

Tonight after the sessions were over Denise and I decided to go for supper at the "restaurant" on the 39th floor of our hotel. It turns out it wasn't a restaurant, it was a lounge. We were hungry, so we didn't stay. However I did take a few snaps with my cheapo camera I carry everywhere. This picture was stitched together using "autostitch" to make a panorama shot.

We then headed out to "Historic John's Grille" for supper. A place just a few blocks away from the hotel. Steaks and seafood. Mmmmm.

On the way back, Denise mentioned she wanted to see the San Francisco Academy of Sciences. This is a science museum and aquarium normally in the Golden Gate park, but for a few years it's been moved to a building downtown while they completely rebuild it's location at the park.

We got there, and the doors say it closes at 5:00 (it was about 8:15 when we got there). However, the doors are unlocked and there's a bunch of people inside, plus a radio station broadcasting, so we go in anyway. We hang out in the store and talk to the guy behind the counter. I ask why it's open and he said "Oh, you didn't know? Third Thursday of every month we're open late until 9:00, set up with live music and a bar". Bonus.

Then I asked about the aquarium and mentioned we hadn't gone through yet. He said "Well, don't tell anyone. Normally it costs $5 but I'll just stamp your hand and let you in for free since you're from Canada and you got here so late".

So, we went through the tour of the History of Chocolate exhibit, then on to the aquarium. There were lots of cool things in the aquarium, like a 400 pound fish (ocean trout I think), some full grown sturgeon, etc. Unfortunately, it was dark and my cheapo camera didn't cut it so no pictures.

After that we went back to the lounge again to see what the city looked like at night. Nice view, but too dark for pictures. We had a few drinks and chatted about strategies for implementing WebCT on campus and other such nonsense, then left.

Tomorrow morning we're were invited to a breakfast with our regional sales rep along with all her other clients. Should be interesting.

Posted by kvl014 at 10:16 PM

Deter Plagiarism and Enhance Learning with Turnitin

This session talks about the "Turnitin" product for detecting plagiarism, and how it is used with WebCT. They provided a PowerPoint presentation which I have in my conference docs and may be available on the WebCT site later.

What Is Turnitin?

Turnitin takes papers, reviews them for originality, and generates an originality report.

This report is available to both students and instructors, so that students can see if they are in violation and correct the paper before submitting it for grading. It also can verify citations efficiently for you.

If it does detect plagiarism, it provides documentation for the incident.

It can detect papers copied in full, or papers copied from various sites (a paragraph here, another one there). It can also detect text that has been paraphrased from other text. Turnitin will give a report showing the percentage of copied content in the paper, as well as where this came from.

Turnitin and WebCT

The product runs in the WebCT environment. Turnitin adds several tools to the WebCT toolbox.

Papers are submitted using the Turnitin assignment tool (not the WebCT assignment tool). It is scanned automaitcally and reports are immediately made avaialble. The Turnitin GradeMark is integrated with the WebCT gradebook. Further integration is planned.

Turnitin does not support Campus 4.1, but does support Vista and CE 6.0. People using 4.1 can still use it but in an unintegrated manner.


How Turnitin Works

The instructor has some options for the reports. For example, they can tell whether to ignore text in quotes, or not, when calculating the originality score.

Other Features

Turnitin also offers a grading tool for papers. Select text in a page, and add comments based on your grading rubrics. For example, show capitalization problems, punctuation problems, etc. Can also add your own comments. The students can see all these in the corrected paper. The grading for this is integrated with the WebCT gradebook, so grades assigned by Turnitin go straight to the gradebook.

Reports can be created for students (to help them improve writing for papers). Can also be used by program chairs to evaluate what they need to change in the programs.

Pricing:

$0.75 per student for Turnitin. For an additional $0.25 per student you get the grading option too.

Technical Specifications:

Future plans:

For more information:

For more information refer to http://plagiarism.org/. Visit the Turnitin web site at http://www.turnitin.com/.

Posted by kvl014 at 06:30 PM

Innovative Additions to WebCT's Digital Content Offerings - Beyond ePaks

This session listed how WebCT's strategies have changed from older "ePaks" to post content, to newer richer content that is better integrated with WebCT. It was basically a marketing parade of current and future integration partners, such as Merlot, SafariU, etc. It didn't get into the technical details of how these are built, but that was listed in other sessions.

Content Mission:

Establish a collaborative, customer-driven process to produce content that will drive e-learning growth.

History of Digital Content at WebCT

Now under one umbrella, the Powerlinks Network. Tools to:

Integration of Systems

Extending teaching and learning environment

Locate, author, and customize content

Principles that guide the PowerLinks program

Goals: Powerlinks that:

New epacs for Fall 05

Three partnerships and new options in progress:


Posted by kvl014 at 05:51 PM

Creating and Using a Learning Object - Start to Finish (Kent State University)

A learning object is any grouping of materials that is structured in a meaningful way and is tied to an educational objective (Johnson, 2003). This session was a demonstration of a SCORM learning object for WWII history developed in Flash.

Details on this project are available at http://www.personal.kent.edu/~vkelly/lo.htm.

The application they developed was a rich media flash application that showed WWII from various viewpoints (soldier, person at home, etc.) Students were assigned the task of writing a report based on one of these perspectives.

They included this flash application in a Vista Learning Module (similar to WebCT 4 content modules). They then used the assignment feature in the learning module to assess the students.

They mentioned a few technical web sites on learning object standards:

The flash application was impressive, but the presentation missed a lot of things. They didn't talk about how they made the SCORM content. They didn't link it directly into the WebCT gradebook or do any other technically challenging tasks. There was also no discussion of using a Learning Object Repository to store the object. So it was basically just a flash program in a course. There were some good things listed to think about when developing a self-contained learning object however. I refer you to their site for information.

Posted by kvl014 at 05:47 PM

How to Cheat Online

This session outlines the different ways students can cheat online, and ways instructors and course designers can minimize these problems.

David Wiley of Utah State University says "If your students can cheat on you, then you deserve it!"

The full version of this talk will be available at http://www.uvsc.edu/disted/cheat/.

Here's some of the highlights.

Students cheat for a variety of reasons:

Often it boils down to the pressures on the student vs their ability to cope. One vital way to reduce cheating is to not put unnecessary pressures on the students. No busy work for example.

There are various levels of cheating:

Some solutions for instructors:

Posted by kvl014 at 03:26 PM

WebCT CE 6 Impact on the Learner

This session is a discussion of the features added to WebCT 6 to assist course designers in enhancing the learning experience of the students, specifically in the area of facilitating student group interaction.

There are a number of new features to enhance collaboration between students. Basically the "student presentation" and "student homepages" tools are gone, replaced by enhancements to the "assignments" tool.

Posted by kvl014 at 12:18 PM

Simplifying Content Distribution with The Vista Learning Object Manager

This session discusses the learning object manager that comes standard with Vista 4, and as an optional component in Campus Edition 6.

In WebCT, there are various levels for organizing courses.

The learning object manager allows us to put course content at any level in this hierarchy.
CE6 also needs community manager to support hierarchy, otherwise it only allows us to share things at institution level.

This allows us to put material online like "Webct orientation" or "Distance Learning Tips" that apply to all courses. Instructors can then decide to add these to their course as needed. If these need to be updated, we only have to change the master document in one place, not in dozens of courses.

One example of using this is to put course content in the "course" level in the hierarchy. It can then be used by every "section" in that course. This allows us to keep the majority of shared course content at the course level, and just add customizations specific to sections at the section level.

This also can help in course development. We can share designer access to specific content, but not the course itself. So people can update just the portions they are supposed to and not access the rest of the course.

We can control who has access to the modules for updating, etc.

It supports import and export of IMS and LRN compliant learning objects, as well as SCORM objects. However, the current implementation does not allow us to metatag the content.

Future enhancements in 2006

Questions:


In summary, this could be very useful for managing common content in TEL templates, department templates, etc. for WebCT courses. However, we would need to get at least one optional module (learning objects) and probably a second module (community manager). Also, this would ONLY work within WebCT, and could not be easily used as a generic campus-wide learning object repository.

Posted by kvl014 at 11:02 AM

Thursday Keynote Talk

Today's keynote was by Jack M. Wilson, President University of Massachusetts. It was titled "The Never Ending Education: How Universities must and can meet the educational needs of students and alumni for life."

The key points of the talk were:

The remainder of the talk discussed how the University of Mass. has addressed some of these issues by embracing distance education and technology. The success has ranked them among the top 50 Universities in the world according to the London Times.

A paraphrase of the closing quote is "The illiterate of the 21st century are not people hwo cannot read or write, it is people who cannot learn, adapt, and relearn."

Posted by kvl014 at 10:44 AM

July 20, 2005

You can't fight City Hall, but you can eat there!

Kevin talks about the dinner they had at San Francisco City Hall.

Tonight was the conference dinner. We had it in the foyer at City Hall.

Now I know what you're thinking. "City Hall?" But this is a really impressive building. A huge dome, intricately carved pillers and frescos on the ceiling, marble everywhere. See the picture below that I put together with my cheap camera and Autostitch.

We had to go through security to get in because it is a government building. Once inside, they were serving buffets with various San Francisco foods (oriental from Chinatown, basic American roast beef and potatoes, greek food, etc.) There was a band in one area, and a museum in another area. Very cool.

city_hall.jpg

Posted by kvl014 at 11:02 PM

A Tale of Three Universities

This session discusses the WebCT vista experience for Perdue, university of Alberta, and Georgia University. It discusses their vista implemementations, how they got to where they are, issues they are currently having, where they are going, and words of wisdom for others intending to move to Vista.

I recommend you download the PowerPoints for this talk from the conference web site for full details. Here's some highlights.

Environment:

Most of these are large systems with at least twice the FTE as the U of S. Often with dozens of campuses. Their implementations include 10-15 servers, including application and database servers, failover servers, test servers, etc.

Issues and Challenges

Future Initiatives

Words of Wisdom

Posted by kvl014 at 06:46 PM

CE6 Partner Program Panel

This session was a panel discussion of participants in the WebCT CE beta program. It was primarily to test installation and upgrade procedures for the product. There is some useful information for people planning to migrate to WebCT 6 from WebCT 4.1.

Common themes include:

Hardware issues:

Course Migration Issues:

Training:

Major Changes:

Known Problems:

Other Questions:

Posted by kvl014 at 05:49 PM

Thomson iLrn powerlink

This entry is a summary of how textbook and online content manufacturer "Thomson" has created a powerlink to Single Signon students from WebCT courses to their iLrn system. Student grades from assignments on the iLrn site can then be sent back to WebCT.

This is mainly of interest to Instructional Designers who may wish to include content from Thomson textbooks into their courses. The powerlink technology is of interest to system administrators.

Thomson is a product that provides textbooks and enhanced online web content to go with the textbook. They have a system called "iLrn" which contains course contents, assignments, etc. This is organized using their "study plan" tool. students take a pre-test, are told what they need to study, and then get a post test at the end). Grades from the post test are fed back into WebCT.

Participants log into a WebCT course shell (ePak) supplied by Thompson. These can be tailored and adapted by the instructor. The WebCT shell doesn't actually have the content in it. Instead, it provides links that take users directly to the iLrn product.

Their powerlinks allow WebCT users to log into iLrn through single signon. So students don't have to re-authenticate. Designers have "instructor" access in iLrn, students have student access. The powerlink also supports return of marks to the WebCT gradebook. Assignments done in iLrn can report their grades back to the WebCT gradebook.

The iLrn look is intentionally different from WebCT so students know when they are outside of WebCT.

Quiz questions from the textbook can be imported into WebCT quiz bank. iLrn questions cannot be added to (yet) or modified. However, they also have a lot of question types (over 50) that cannot be supported in WebCT. For example, mathematical, physics, etc.

This does work in WebCT 4.1 as well as Vista, WebCT 6, etc.

Technically installation involves installing the powerlink, and then adding the ePak to WebCT.

Posted by kvl014 at 02:49 PM

WebCT Powerlinks SDK

This session talks about the WebCT Powerlinks SDK module which allows us to expand the WebCT toolset with our own customizations. For example, integrate with libraries, the Computer Science system, etc.

The Powerlinks SDK is included in WebCT Vista 4, and is an optional package for WebCT CE 6. Products developed with this SDK will work with WebCT 6 without any requiring any additional modules. However, we need to purchase the SDK if we want to develop our own custom extensions.

The powerlinks is Used for customizing WebCT behaviour, custom SIS integrations, process automation, and integration with external systems. Anything that requires custom programming .

The SDK has three components:

There is a development user community available at devnet.webct.com. Provides user support, code examples, documentation, as well as shared code from other members of Devnet.

Posted by kvl014 at 12:17 PM

Interoperability with Open Source Community

A summary of WebCT's feature presentation on how WebCT can be extended with open source and commercial tools using the IMS Tools Interoperability standard. This gives the advantages of open source tool development but allows that to work within a well-established commercial framework.

WebCT has committed to using the IMS Tools Interoperability framework. This makes it very easy to integrate open source modules into WebCT. Once installed, these work as if they are built-in WebCT tools.

The IMS TI standard controls APIs for installation packages, launching the tools, authentication between WebCT and the tools, and reporting back from the tools. So we can build something using the IMS TI standard that in theory can be easily loaded into commercial and open source learning management systems, including WebCT.


For administrators, they get an XML file in the IMS TI framework that describes the tools, the customizations available, etc. Once loaded into WebCT, the tool now appears in the admin configuration menus, etc. Any required settings (server names for external access, etc.) can be configured.

For designers, the tool appears as another tool in their toolbox. They can add it to the courses, apply course-specific customizations, use with other WebCT capabilities like selective release, etc. Any student evaluation ends up in columns in the WEbCT gradebook, etc.

For students, they just click on the tool like anything else. There may be some customizations students can do. SSO is automatically provided if needed.

The key is it is seamless.

WebCT demoed this using products developed by commercial products, as well as open source initiatives such as modules developed for SAKAI.

This is not yet in the WebCT product, and probably won't be until the next major release next year, as the IMS TI standard is still under development. Once it is available, people will be able to use install packages that use this standard and use the tools in the base WebCT 6 product. However, we would have to purchase the powerlinks extension to do any of our own tool development.

Posted by kvl014 at 11:01 AM

Conference Themes

In this installment Kevin talks about some of the common themes developing at the WebCT conference about the new WebCT 6 and Vista 4.

I'm using Denise's laptop with it's wireless connection between sessions to update this blog entry.

Here's a quick summary of some of the themes developing at the conference.

  1. WebCT Campus Edition 6 and Vista 4 are really the same product. They share the same code base and database structure. The difference is that WebCT 6 has been modularized. If you purchase all the modules, you end up with Vista (and paying a lot more money in the process.)

  2. The base WebCT 6 system contains the standard course development, presentation, and assessment as WebCT 4. It also includes full support for the IMS API for system integration, management of class lists, reporting of grades, etc. So we don't need anything more to integrate with Banner, LDIS, SSAM, etc. One interesting note, IMS dictates that there are many mandatory fields that MUST be stored by ALL IMS compliant products. So even if WebCT doesnt actually use the information, it does store it and report it back. Useful to know when investigating other IMS-based systems like SAKAI.

  3. The "Community" module allows us to distribute WebCT administration to departments. Normally Vista is designed to be hierarchical, institution, division, department, course, section. In CE 6, we only get one "division", and "department" which limits us to only allowing administrative functions for the entire system, or for the owners of "courses" and the sections beneath them. When we add this module, we can add additional adminstrative levels. For example, we could have an "Division" for STU courses, and then allow them to manage their own class lists instead of integrating with Banner.

  4. The "Learning Objects" module allows us to create course learning objects that can be shared at all the administrative levels. So, you could build something that is only shared between all sections of a course. Or you could share only in a department, or across the whole institution. Courses can use these objects. However, if the master object changes, it also changes within all the courses that use it.

  5. The "Powerlinks" kit allows us to extend the WebCT toolset by adding our own tools that look and operate like normal WebCT tools (see the next presentation for more info in the open source version of this, but the powersight kit adds some WebCT-specific capabilities as well).

  6. The "Powersight" kit adds some additional database tables and reporting capabilities to get a lot of detail of interest to groups like Institutional Analysis.

Much of the conference is explaining how these different modules work together. Vista 4 has them all built in. WebCT 6 has these as optional modules.

Posted by kvl014 at 10:47 AM

July 18, 2005

Something for Tyson

Monday evening, after the first day of workshops, Kevin and Denise go wandering San Francisco, buying clothes and checking out all the hot spots, like the Apple store!

Hey Tyson, check this out!

IMG_0003.JPG

Today we had the first two days of pre-conference workshop sessions. Afterwards, Denise and I went shopping. Denise's suitcase got lost at customs so she needed to get some clothes, so we went around to a bunchy of stores.

Along thw way, we found "The Apple Store". I can see Tyson drooling now.

It's an interesting place. Most computer stores, you go in and every computer has a locked password that doesn't let anyone use the system. In the apple store, not only do they encourage everyone to use the computers, but they ALSO provide free internet access to those computers. This picture shows how crowded this made the store ...

IMG_0009.JPG

They also have some staff members who appeared to be permanently doing Mac demonstrations and answering questions.

IMG_0005.JPG

That, plus a kids area, the genius bar, etc. Very cool computer store.

Posted by kvl014 at 09:00 PM