WebCT Exams - Am I the April Fool?

This term, I decided (against all better judgement) to take a couple of courses online. I don't trust WebCT, nor do I trust their technical staff, so before I started an online quiz I decided to contact the technical support to assure it is safe to do so.

Here is the transcript of the events that transpired:

me: With the webCT technical difficulties, is it safe to write an online quiz this afternoon?


them: Despite the problems WebCT is currently experiencing, writing quizzes appears to be working correctly. This feature (quizzes/assessments) has been tested this morning without problem.

WebCT goes down as I begin my quiz

me: Followup question: If I begin a timed quiz, and WebCT goes down... Will WebCT count that as an attempt, or do I have to contact my professor and have things cleared up?



Way to go, Laurier. Why do they insist on using the WebCT system?

We share a few programs with other schools, so I would like to invite our school to examine the online systems of other institutes. Namely, Nippissing's effective use of Google Apps. Their system provides the following resources that ours does not:

• All resources (including email) in the same system.
• Laurier uses both WebCT and Novell. - Neither are proving to be reliable.
• Discussion boards with RSS feeds.
• Laurier does not supply RSS syndication, but if you log in you can see a green star beside new items. As of right now, even this feature is on the fritz.
• Ample space for online storage.
• 20 Megs? I have a PDF file bigger than that!
• Calendar, able to sync with Outlook, blackberrys, or whatnot, with different views to see exactly which courses you want to see.
• Although WebCT does have a calendar feature, professors have learned long ago that it's not worth trying.
• Online document editors for word processing, spreadsheets, and slideshows.
• WebCT is now integrated with turnitin.com - something that I don't think Google offers (yet)... but we could use the old system of turnitin.com if we didn't have WebCT anyway.
• Compatible with all browsers.
• Compatible with browsers made three years ago. Officially unsupported by newer browsers (which work anyway, except for the annoying popups that say "Your browser may be unsupported!").
• Still supported by its makers.
• Laurier's version of WebCT is no longer supported by Blackboard Learning Systems. (Huh... so that's why ITS takes so long to fix things.)

I don't think any of these are a stretch for reasons why we should abandon WebCT for a better system.

--

D. Phillips