Abstract

    The evaluation reports in this series usually feature several products at once. The current review, however, comes at a time when one of the most widely used (and expensive) online learning management systems is undergoing a major change in its marketing strategy and corporate focus. WebCT is currently evolving to a new version (WebCT Vista), with much attendant discussion by distance education (DE) users. The current review, as the others in this series, adds the DE student's perspective to this discussion. The review compares the existing WebCT Campus Edition with the new WebCT Vista, and examines some of the problems associated with the migration to Vista at the institutional level.

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    Conclusions

    With so many comparable open source softwares emerging for course management, containing more varied features than WebCT, one has to wonder: how long can such costly proprietary products survive? In the case of WebCT, the short answer to this is - possibly two years. If, as has been suggested, the vendor will no longer support earlier versions than Vista after 2006, it will either gather massive upgrade payments from many of its clients in the interim, or will lose them altogether to the new OSS systems. So is this WebCT's last attempt to make large amounts of money in the face of the growing OSS challenge, its Òlast hurrah?Ó