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| Product Name | Moodle 1.5.2 | WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Developer Name | Moodle.com | WebCT |
| URL | Moodle 1.1 | WebCT Campus Edition 3.7 |
| Review Date | August 26, 2005 | September 26, 2003 |
| Forums | Moodle 1.5.2 Discussions | WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Discussions |
| Reviewer | Email Review Staff | Email Review Staff |
| Communication Tools | ||
| Discussion Forums |
The discussion tool supports a social constructionist pedagogy model. Discussions can be viewed by date, by thread, by author. Instructors can split discussion branches from the main discussion into a new discussion. Instructors can determine the level of involvement (read, write, or post anonymously) for students. Posts can include attachments, an image or URL. The discussion tool includes a formatting text editor. Posts may be peer reviewed by other students. Students may receive posts to the dicussion forums as daily digests of subject lines or whole posts as email. Students can subscribe to forum RSS feeds. Discuss |
Discussions can be viewed by date, by thread, by subject and by author. Instructors can determine the level of involvement (read, write, or post anonymously) for students. Instructors may create separate discussion environments for small groups. Posts can include attachments and URLs. The threaded discussion software includes a formatting text editor. Discussion threads are expandable and collapsible to view an entire conversation on one screen. The entire discussion can be saved or printed for off-line reading. Discuss |
| File Exchange |
Students can submit assignments using drop boxes. Discuss |
Students can submit assignments using drop boxes. Students can upload files to a shared group folder. Discuss |
| Internal Email |
Students must have an external Internet email address. Discuss |
Students can use the Internal email feature to email individuals. Students can attach and archive files and can forward messages to external email accounts. Students can search email their email boxes on a number of criteria. Students can spell check outgoing messages. Discuss |
| Online Journal/Notes |
Students can attach notes to any page. Students can combine their notes with the course content to create a printable study guide. Discuss | |
| Real-time Chat |
The chat tool supports images. The system creates archive logs for all chat rooms. Instructors can view chat logs and share these with students. Instructors can schedule chats using the course calendar. Students can see who else is online within their course and send them an instant message. Discuss |
The Java-based chat tool supports private rooms and private messages. The system creates archive logs for all chat rooms. The chat tool supports up to four simultaneous group discussions. Discuss |
| Video Services | ||
| Whiteboard |
The software supports an instructor-controlled whiteboard. The whiteboard supports image uploading and annotation. The software can archive a snapshot of whiteboard sessions for future viewing. Discuss | |
| Productivity Tools | ||
| Bookmarks |
Students can create bookmarks in a private folder. Discuss | |
| Orientation/Help |
Students can access context sensitive help. Discuss |
Students can access context sensitive help for any tool. Students can access the product knowledge base. Discuss |
| Searching Within Course |
Students can search all discussion threads in their course and all glossary entries. Discuss |
Students can search all course content, discussion postings, and email messages within a course. Students can constrain a search using filters. Discuss |
| Calendar/Progress Review |
Students can view their completed and pending course readings and activities. Students can view their grades on completed assignments. RSS feeds are available for a number of resources that can notify people using aggregators of changes to materials. Discuss |
Instructors and students can post events and announcements in the online course calendar. Students can view their grades. Students can keep track of all their assignments, deadlines, and due dates in an online course calendar. All students have a personal home page that lists all courses in which the student is enrolled, new email and all course and system-wide events, from their personal calendar. Discuss |
| Work Offline/Synchronize |
Instructors can publish course content on a CD-ROM that can be linked to dynamically from within the online course or viewed offline. Students can compile and download the content for an entire course into a format that can be printed or stored locally. Upon re-entering a course, students have the option of resuming at the last page viewed. Discuss | |
| Student Involvement Tools | ||
| Groupwork |
Instructors can assign students to groups or the system can randomly create groups. Groups can either be defined at the course level and apply across all activities that support them, or at the individual activity level. In addition, the system supports a workshop module aimed specifically at peer review of student work. Discuss |
Instructors can assign students to groups or the system can randomly create groups. Each group can have its own shared group presentation folder and discussion forum. Discuss |
| Self-assessment |
Instructors can create timed or un-timed self-assessments that students can take multiple times. The system automatically scores multiple choice, true/false, and short answer type questions and can display instructor-created feedback, explanations and links to relevant course material. Discuss |
Instructors can create self-assessments. The system automatically scores multiple choice, true/false, caluclated, short-answer and multiple answer type questions and can display instructor-created feedback. Instructors can use the MathML equation editor to enable students to enter and edit mathematical notations. Discuss |
| Student Community Building | ||
| Student Portfolios |
Students can create a personal home page. Students’ personal home pages may include a list of all discussion posts they have submitted, their photo, and personal information. Discuss |
Students can create a personal home page in each course in which they are enrolled. Students can use their personal home page in a course to display their work in that course. Students may export their homepage. Discuss |
| Administration Tools | ||
| Authentication |
The system uses basic username and password authentication. The system can authenticate against a variety of sources, including external databases, LDAP directory servers, IMAP, POP3, secure NNTP and First Class servers, and Unix users through PAM. The system also supports Shibboleth and the Central Authentication Service (CAS). Discuss |
Administrators can protect access to individual courses with a username and password. Access can also be restricted based on IP address. User logins can be encrypted with SSL. The system has a password reminder option. The system can also authenticate against an external LDAP server or using the Kerberos protocol. Administrators can set up fail-through authentication against a secondary source (e.g. the system's own database) in the event that the primary source (e.g. LDAP server )fails. Discuss |
| Course Authorization |
The software provides tools for Administrators to assign access privileges to different group roles: Administrators, Instructors, Students and Guests. Group role privileges can be further defined into subgroup privileges. Instructors or students may be assigned different roles in different courses. The system can access authorization information stored in other external directory services, including payment gateways. Discuss |
Administrators can assign different levels of access to the system or courses based on the following pre-defined roles: instructors, students, designers, teaching assistants, and system administrators. Instructors or students may be assigned different roles in different courses. Discuss |
| Registration Integration |
Instructors can batch add students to a course using a delimited text file or students can self-register. The software supports integration with external information systems through an event-driven API or through a tool that is based on scheduled system exports. Discuss |
Administrators can batch add students to the system using a delimited text file. Instructors can add students to their courses manually or allow students to self-register. Administrators can transfer student information bi-directionally between the system and an SIS. The software supports integration with SCT Banner, SCT Luminis, Datatel, PeopleSoft 8 or customized integration with other SIS or portal systems. The software is compliant with the IMS Enterprise Specification for Student Data (Institution License only). Discuss |
| Hosted Services |
The product provider and partner companies offer hosted systems that include: managed software installation, service level agreements on a network of fault-tolerant Unix servers in a secure facility with environmental control, redundant Tier 1 network connections and power, 10Gb bandwidth per month and nightly backups. Hosting contracts are fixed per month and allow unlimited courses. Discuss |
The product provider offers a hosted system that includes service level agreements with guaranteed system availability, utilizes a network of high-performance, fault-tolerant servers, a secure facility with environmental control, redundant and conditioned power, a modern alarm/security system, 24x7x365 monitoring, a direct T3 connection with second redundant T3 connection, and daily offsite tape backups. Individuals can access course and system information from any computer that has a web browser and Internet connection. Hosting is also available from Embanet, which provides daily and offsite tape backups, system clustering, managed bandwidth usage, and multiple Internet service providers to provide redundant fail-over capabilities. Discuss |
| Course Delivery Tools | ||
| Course Management |
Instructors can link discussions to specific dates or course events. The system can synchronize course dates defined by the institutional calendar. Discuss |
Instructors can personalize access to specific course materials based on group membership, previous course activity, or student performance. Instructors can set up specific course content that is released on a specific date and must be completed by students before they continue with the course. Instructors can design courses for instructor facilitated learning or system managed self-study. Discuss |
| Instructor Helpdesk |
Instructors can access the online instructor manual, context sensitive help, and an instructor support community hosted on the product provider’s site. Discuss |
Instructors can access the online help manual, context sensitive help, and numerous instructor support communities to share information in a number of discipline-specific or general interest forums. Instructors can subscribe to an instructor mailing list. Instructors can take online courses about instructional design strategies for online courses and how to use the product. Discuss |
| Online Grading Tools |
Instructors can mark assignments and all assessments not automatically scored online. Instructors can assign partial credit for certain answers. Instructors can add the grades for offline assignments to the online gradebook. Instructors can view grades in the gradebook by assignment, by student, and for all students on all assignments. Instructors can export a comma-delimited version of the gradebook (or a real .xls spreadsheet) for use in an external spreadsheet program. Instructors can provide feedback on all assignments through links to the relevant course content, and through annotations. Instructors can search the gradebook to find all students who meet a specific performance criteria, mark, or status such as exam completion. Instructors can create a course grading scale that can employ either percentages, letter grades or pass/fail metrics. When an instructor adds an assignment to the course, the software automatically adds it to the gradebook. Instructors can delegate the responsibility for grading assignments. Discuss |
Instructors can mark all assessments not automatically scored online. Instructors can assign partial credit for certain answers. Instructors can add the grades for offline assignments to the online gradebook. Instructors can export a comma-delimited version of the gradebook to an external spreadsheet program. Instructors can manually edit all grades. Instructors can search the gradebook. Instructors can delegate the responsibility for grading assignments. The gradebook supports the creation of custom columns which can contain either grade information or other instructor-determined details. When an instructor adds an assignment to the course, the software automatically adds it to the online gradebook. Discuss |
| Student Tracking |
Instructors can get reports showing the number of times, time, date, frequency and IP address of each student who accessed course content, discussion forums, course assessments, and assignments. Instructors can get a report that shows number of attempts and time per attempt on each assessment for individual students. Instructors can maintain private notes about each student in a secure area. Instructors can get a report that summarizes individual student performance on assignments. Instructors can set a flag on individual course components to track the frequency with which students access those components. Instructors can monitor students who are currently logged in to the course. Instructors can summarize all discussion posts to date by a student. Discuss |
Instructors can get reports showing the number of times, time and date on which, and frequency with which each student or all students in a course, as an aggregated group, accessed course content, specific course units and discussion forums. Instructors can also get a report showing the duration of time each student spent on course content, specific course units and discussion forums. Instructors can share this tracking information with students. Discuss |
| Automated Testing and Scoring |
Instructors can create automatically scored true/false, multiple choice, multiple answer, cloze, matching, numerical, calculated and short answer questions. Questions can contain images , video, other media files, and detailed feedback on each answer. Instructors can create mathematical equations. Custom question types can also be defined. Instructors can create personal, course specific or system wide test banks from questions can be chosen to create tests for students. Instructors can import questions from existing test banks. The system can randomize the questions in a test and the alternatives for multiple choice questions. Instructors can require a special password and set times for when students can or must access tests. Instructors can set a time limit on a test. Instructors can limit attempts to specific IP addresses. Instructors can differentially weight tests and create grading rules. Instructors can permit multiple attempts, and whether correct results are shown. Instructors can override the automated scoring. Instructors can also create survey questions. The system provides test analysis data for individual test items. The system also supports the Remote Quiz Protocol which allows questions to be rendered and scored externally to the system via standards-based web services. Discuss |
Instructors can create automatically scored true/false, multiple choice, matching, calculated answer, and short answer questions. Instructors can also create essay questions. Instructors can import questions from existing test banks. Instructors can set a time limit on a test. Instructors can use the Mathematics Markup Language equation editor to enable students to enter and edit mathematical notations. Instructors can also use IP addresses to restrict access to tests. The system supports proctored exams. Discuss |
| Curriculum Design | ||
| Accessibility Compliance |
To comply with Section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act, the software implements the following features: alt tags on all system images, and data tables that are optimized for use with screen readers. The system can also filter all user supplied inputs through W3C Tidy program to convert it to valid XHTML code. Discuss |
To comply with Section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act, the software implements the following features: alternate text for non-text elements, content available in a high contrast color scheme, collapsible menus, content is only presented in text and graphics, content readable without style sheets, keyboard access to chat tool, appropriately titled framesets that describe the functionality of the frames layout, and allowing invisible navigation links to be used by screen readers. Discuss |
| Course Templates |
The software provides three default course templates: activities arranged by week, activities arranged by topic, or a discussion-focussed social format. Instructors can create new course or content templates. Instructors can use templates to create discussion forums, links, course content, and resources, and these templates include a WYSIWYG content editor with spell-checking. Discuss |
The software provides support for template-based course creation. The templates include a WYSIWYG content editor. Instructors can use templates to create syllabus, course descriptions, course units, discussion forums, glossaries, calendar entries, tips, chat, and resources. The system provides course design wizards that provide step-by-step guides that take faculty and course designers through the completion of common course tasks, such as setting up the course homepage, syllabus, organizer pages, content modules, discussions, mail, calendar and chat. Instructors can categorize course content as calendar entries,course units, discussion forums, glossaries, syllabus, tips, and resources. Course content may be uploaded through a form or through WebDAV. Course content may also be exported for later-use. Discuss |
| Curriculum Management |
Instructors can specify multiple paths through a course for different skill levels or job functions. Discuss | |
| Customized Look and Feel |
The system provides 10 default course look and feel templates. Institutions can create their own look and feel templates across the entire system. Institutions can apply their own institutional images, headers and footers across all courses. Instructors can change the the navigation icons, color schemes, and order and name of menu items for a course. Discuss |
The system provides default course look and feel templates. Institutions can create their own look and feel templates across the entire system, including their own institutional logos, headers, and footers. Instructors can alter the appearance of their course. Discuss |
| Instructional Standards Compliance |
The software can import course content that is SCORM 1.2 or AICC compliant, and can export quiz content in IMS QTI 2.0 format. The system includes tools to facilitate the migration of course content between different versions of the software. The provider company supports migration from the following course management systems: BlackBoard. Discuss |
The product provider has self-tested the software and reports compliance with the following: IMS Content Packaging 1.1.2, IMS QTI 1.1, IMS Enterprise 1.1, and Microsoft LRN 2.0. The product provider will work with the institution to migrate existing courses into the system. Discuss |
| Instructional Design Tools |
Instructors can create both linear and nonlinear learning sequences using a content library. Instructors can organize larning objects into learning sequences. The software supports constructivist and problem-based learning approaches. Instructors can create relationships between assignments and required resources which can then serve as templates for future lessons. Discuss |
Instructors can create both linear and nonlinear learning sequences. Instructors can organize learning objects, course tools, and content into learning sequences that are reusable. Learning objects can be imported from external authoring tools and added to courses. Instructors can upload documents to the system using drag-and-drop through WebDAV. Instructors can create bookmarks for specific courses. Discuss |
| Content Sharing/Reuse | ||
| Hardware/Software | ||
| Client Browser Required |
The software supports any browser supporting HTML 3 or higher and uses cascading style sheets (CSS) in browsers that support CSS. Discuss |
The software requires Internet Explorer 5.1+, Netscape 6.2.1+, and AOL 7.0. Javascript must be enabled in all browsers. Internet Explorer 5.5 SP1 is not supported. Use of some features requires Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Discuss |
| Database Requirements |
The system supports either MySQL or PostgreSQL databases. The system requires only one database and can coexist with tables from other applications. Discuss | |
| Server Software |
The software requires PHP 4.1.0 or later, MySQL(or PostgreSQL), and a web server. The software was developed using the Apache web server. The software includes: administration reports through a web browser, course archive and restore, installation setup wizard that includes database creation, backup and archiving, tools to backup and purge either course content or student data for individual courses and groups, rotated logs, notification services, a display of the last sessions in the system that can be filtered by either IP address or date, site configuration. Typically, local administrators install the software. The product provider offers for-fee installation consultation. Discuss |
The following server software tools are available: resource monitoring, crash recovery, backup of a course to a desktop machine. The server administration tools are accessed over the Web. The software requires Perl 5.6.1 and Apache 2.0 both of which are bundled with the system. Typically, local administrators install the software. The product provider offers for-fee installation consultation. Archived courses can be restored to overwrite another course. Discuss |
| UNIX Server |
The software is available for most variants of Linux or Unix. Discuss |
The software is available for Red Hat Linux 7.3, Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 2.1, and ES 2.1 for Intel processors, and Solaris 8 and 9. Suggested minimum hardware recommendations are one 1GHz Pentium III or two SPARC, 750 MHz Ultra Sparc III, 2GB RAM, 72GB disk space in a hardware RAID-1 or RAID-5 configuration. Discuss |
| Windows Server |
The software is available for a variety of Windows web servers. Discuss |
The software is available for Microsoft Windows 2000 Server SP3 or Windows 2000 Advanced Server SP3. Suggested (minimum) hardware recommendations are: one 1 GHz Pentium III processor 2GB RAM, 72GB disk space in a hardware RAID-1 or RAID-5 configuration. Discuss |
| Pricing/Licensing | ||
| Company Profile |
Moodle.org is an open source community launched in 2001 that has grown out of a PhD research project by Martin Dougiamas. Version 1.0 was released on August 20, 2002. Moodle.com is a company launched in 2003 that sponsors Moodle development and provides commercial support, hosting, custom development and consulting. The Moodle Partners are a network of companies that work with Moodle.com to provide services around the world. Discuss |
WebCT began as a project by a University of British Columbia professor Murray Goldberg as part of a grant project to study the effects of online teaching on learning. Murray founded WebCT in 1997 at UBC, and delivered it as a commercial product at that time. In 1999 the company was acquired by Universal Learning Technology (ULT) and combined company was renamed WebCT, and headquarters moved to Lynnfield, Massachusetts. WebCT is a privately held company backed by a group of investors, which include CMGI@Ventures, JPMorgan Partners, SCT, and Thomson Corporation. WebCT currently sells and supports two product lines, WebCT Campus Edition, and WebCT Vista. Discuss |
| Costs |
The software is free and distributed under the GNU Public License. Discuss |
The Campus Edition Institution License is priced based on number of full-time equivalent (FTE) students in an institution. The Campus Edition Focus License is priced based on a limited number of student seats (normally 3000). The software is licensed on an annual subscription basis. Technical support is provided by email, web form, or phone. The annual license fee includes support for two administrators per license. Discuss |
| Open Source |
The software is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Discuss | |
| Optional Extras |
More than 45 language translations are available as plug-in packs. Each course can have its own glossary which can be maintained by the instructor or collaboratively by the students. Terms in the glossary that appear in the course can be auto-linked back to the glossary. The system has a module which accepts payments for course registrations via PayPal. The system supports the creation of Wikis. The system can display RSS feeds. Discuss |
Members of the WebCT PowerLinks Network develop applications that extend and integrate the system with learning tools and key campus system. The software supports right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Hebrew. For these languages, any left-to-right language words or phrases, which are embedded in the text, display correctly (i.e. left-to-right). WebCT Campus Edition is licensed in two variants: The Focus License allows a subset of the functionality included in the Institution License by restricting the number of student seats and eliminating access to APIs that allow integration with campus systems.The company offers consulting services for implementation planning and advanced technical services including an initial technical assessment and evaluation of issues such as authentication, load balancing, and migration and upgrade planning. Premium support services are available for quicker response time, direct access, and 24/7 support. The company also offers training. Discuss |
| Software Version |
The current software version number is 1.5.2. Discuss |
The current software version number is 4.1 Discuss |
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