The programs are generally priced according to how many courses an institution wants to put on line, how many students will take the course, and whether the institution prefers to purchase the software outright or to pay to use it for a set time. For a few hundred dollars more, an institution can buy the permanent use of the program. Being a private organization gives us the advantage of being able to move quickly. But Iowa's Dr. Sugrue is glad to have a course tool that was designed on a college campus. WebCT, the program she uses, was created at the University of British Columbia by a computer scientist.
Faculty members seem to be very comfortable with the way it's organized.
While developing WebCT, he says, he received valuable feedback from colleagues who tried the program, and he was able to test it in his own classes. Dr. Goldberg says faculty members should keep the programs' overall capabilities in mind as they consider possible purchases. He says professors tend to want more and more features as they get comfortable with on-line teaching. To help professors make the best choices, many institutions have formed committees or appointed researchers to make recommendations. When professors at the University of Manitoba began requesting Web-course tools last year, the university conducted a study of several popular programs.