[clug] WebCT vs. moodle

[Robert Edwards]

If you look at "http://moodle.anu.edu.au", you will notice that ANU
have an evaluation site for moodle set up already. There is also one
for Sakai, an open-source competitor to WebCT being developed by a
number of very large and influential US universities and to which
the ANU is now a member of the development consortium.

Funny thing is that my wife, Jenny, is the WebCT co-ordinator at ANU,
and so I get to hear about all sorts of "issues" that it has. I know
that ANU are considering a generic course "portal", so that each
course can appear on a single site, and then get bounced to whichever
web site it is actually hosted on (WebCT, moodle, Sakai, or some
discrete web-site as we generally use in the Department of Computer
Science).

How does a student promote one or the other over WebCT? Can't really
help on that, but you could ask your course lecturer(s) to consider
using one of the others. Other replies to this have good advice about
how to evaluate the options and make a case for one versus the other.

Jenny tells me that the ANU Students Association have a stake in the
decision on what to replace WebCT with and so you could find out who
the SA rep is and put your case to them.

Anyway, not really a Linux/CLUG issue, so I recommend any further
discussion be off this list (contact me directly, if you like).

Cheers,

Bob Edwards,
Chief IT Officer,
Department of Computer Science,
Australian National University,
Canberra, AUSTRALIA, 0200

Robin Shannon wrote:
> This isn't directly linux related, but i know that many people on this
> list are staff/students at ANU and so must have had to interact with
> the giant lump of turd that goes by the name of WebCT. I'm a student
> and i can't stand the damn thing, so i was thinking about trying to
> push the administration to change to moodle (which is an
> Australian-based open source course ware system). Now i know that will
> be an uphill battle hence why I'm writting here.
> 
> First, does anyone actually like WebCT? i just want to make sure that
> it isn't just me, my friends and my lecturers that loathe it.
> 
> Second, does anyone have any experience with moodle? I've looked at
> the website and some reviews and stuff and it looks pretty spiffy but
> i don't have any actual experience with it.
> 
> Third, are other people intrested trying to do some open source advocacy?
> 
> Four, where (if others are interested) would we start? Does anyone
> (specifically staff) have any knowledge or thoughts about which bits
> of the bureaucracy are involved in such decision.
> 
> paz,
> -rjs.
>