Forum .LRN Q&A: WebCT customers are ripe for picking?

1: WebCT customers are ripe for picking?

Posted by Lars Pind on 09/19/02 01:41 PM

Hi Guys,

Those looking for work might find inspiration in the WebCT customer
list here:

http://www.webct.com/company/viewpage?name=company_webct_customers

As far as I've been told, WebCT recently switched from a Perl
product to a new Java version, which is very 1.0-ish, *and* a lot
more expensive, *and* they're forcing their customers to upgrade.

So maybe we should simply go through the list together and contact
them? Grow the market for all of us. Spread the love! :)

Good luck ... Enjoy! ... and keep us all posted on the results.

/Lars

2: Response to WebCT customers are ripe for picking? (response to 1)

Posted by Janine Ohmer on 09/19/02 03:49 PM

Seems like a good idea, Lars - were you thinking of a coordinated effort, or all of us doing it on our own and reporting back?

3: Response to WebCT customers are ripe for picking? (response to 1)

Posted by Lars Pind on 09/19/02 03:58 PM

I was basically thinking the more people go at it, the better :)

But I'd be happy to coordinate something, so we don't all go after the same poor IT guy.

/Lars

4: Response to WebCT customers are ripe for picking? (response to 1)

Posted by Michael Feldstein on 09/19/02 05:22 PM

As it turns out, we're going to have somebody with lots of hands on WebCT experience joining the User Advisory Board in October, as soon as she returns from her travels. I have already asked her to help start a conversation comparing the two platforms over on the UAB discussion board when she gets home. As soon as that discussion begins, I'll post to this thread with the URL for it.

5: Response to WebCT customers are ripe for picking? (response to 1)

Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 09/20/02 10:04 AM

Hi Lars,

though I definitly like your idea, I'm strongly in favour of coordination and maybe even get it driven by the EB/TAB. Write up some official statement, link it to a comparison page which has a list of all companies willing to install dotLRN for these institutions. And send this official statement to the WebCT customers as well as the IT-Media. I will happily help in this effort but need to know a little bit more about WebCT to draft the letters.

Get it moving !

6: Response to WebCT customers are ripe for picking? (response to 1)

Posted by Lars Pind on 09/20/02 10:16 AM

Ah, I see, you want someone else to do your sales work for you?

Yeah, I'm in favor of that, too

/Lars

7: Response to WebCT customers are ripe for picking? (response to 1)

Posted by defunct defunct on 09/20/02 11:16 AM

Yet another good example of why this communties need a marketing volunteer arm as well !!!!

Hope you're all noting this when I raise its ugly head again in the next few weeks (yes its that lovely M word)...

So for those of you who don't speak bollox (I mean business), Formalised Evangelism

8: Response to WebCT customers are ripe for picking? (response to 1)

Posted by Rafael Calvo on 09/24/02 01:29 AM

Lars,
have you seen the slides I posted some time ago on LMS? They might be usefull for this

9: Response to WebCT customers are ripe for picking? (response to 1)

Posted by Caroline Meeks on 10/02/02 03:30 AM

WebCT gave a presentation at the IMS tutorial I attended today at EduCause. They appear to be a leader in using IMS standards.

In the "Embracing Standards" slide they list:

IMS Enterprise 1.01
IMS Content Packaging 1.1.2
IMS Question & Test 1.1
IMS MetaData 1.2

and
SCORM Sharable content reference model
Section 508 (Anyone know what this one is?)
JA-SIG uPortal (I'll be posting another post on uPortal)
LDAP, Kerberos

IMS compliance is a big deal at this conference. Another presentation gave specific questions to ask vendors to assess IMS compliance and how to write IMS compliance into your contracts.

Perhaps a group of disastified WebCT users can work together to IMS import/export functionality.

10: Response to WebCT customers are ripe for picking? (response to 1)

Posted by Jeff Davis on 10/02/02 07:16 AM

Caroline, Section 508 is the US regulation governing accessibilty
for government sites.
<p>
From <a href="http://www.section508.gov/">http://www.section508.gov/</a>
<blockquote>
Section 508 requires that Federal agencies' electronic and
information technology is accessible to people with disabilities.
</blockquote>
<p>
You can check if a page meets section 508 guidelines at
<a href="http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp">http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp</a>
although the short answer is that almost none in OpenACS do right now.

11: Response to WebCT customers are ripe for picking? (response to 1)

Posted by Jon Griffin on 10/02/02 05:29 PM

Malformed HTML is the bane of OpenACS and certainly not many packages implement the bobby guidelines. I did clean-ups on some code (I forget which packages) and it all validates. I am not sure of the bobby validation but I think what I did will come close.

I generally even put the optional tags in my tables, but that will be harder to do with dynamically generated code.