WebCT Vista : Anyone at a campus using it?

[Drakkon]

So here at my university we use this pacakge Called WebCT for our web classes (which i am part of helping design). Currently we are on a "Campus Edition" version which allows us ot do a lot but it just isnt that great. We had the WebCT reps come and showcase there new version called Vista for us...and although impressive, now that I'm in a test account they gave us to review before actually plunging into buying (which will be like a $500K investment after servers and everything for the university for this thing to run on)...im finding its not too much better than there previous version which were using now.
So just wondering if anyone out there has worked in either or possibly both and if so whcih one is better u think?
And what are some good parts of Vista I can play with (I've got admin access currently )? Or what are some crappy parts of it that make it not worth while?

 

[minendo]

We run both WebCT and WebCT Vista. Only a few courses utilize Vista since we just upgraded to it.

Vista is much better in my opinion. Many more features for both students and course supervisors.

 

[Cooljt1]

i take a guidance class via webct.

 

[cpals]

We have WebCT at my school.

 

[psydancerqt]

Originally posted by: cpals
We have WebCT at my school.

 

[SethK28]

Originally posted by: psydancerqt

Originally posted by: cpals
We have WebCT at my school.

UGA

 

[notfred]

We have webCT at my school too, but not Vista.

It's alright. could be better, but it works.

 

[Drakkon]

for those that use it : what works? what doesn't? (for wahtever version your using)
I have to give a report by next friday contrasting the two and i kina wanna make sure my issues are across the board bad and not just my school has it set up for them badly...

so far i got:
vista equations suck...i tried entering one jsut now and it took 5 minutes jsut to load the editor and even then it didnt work
vista has no tools for course compiling from waht i can see
vista seems to take longer to load even from webct's servers(where they stup our vista "preview)

 

[cpals]

Originally posted by: Drakkon
for those that use it : what works? what doesn't? (for wahtever version your using)
I have to give a report by next friday contrasting the two and i kina wanna make sure my issues are across the board bad and not just my school has it set up for them badly...

so far i got:
vista equations suck...i tried entering one jsut now and it took 5 minutes jsut to load the editor and even then it didnt work
vista has no tools for course compiling from waht i can see
vista seems to take longer to load even from webct's servers(where they stup our vista "preview)

At my school they were having a lot of problems with the system not saving individual student's tests. They would take a test and then it would later show up as not being taken. Weird. The tech people thought it was a problem with Netscape, but I don't know if they ever figured it out. This was with WebCT (Not Vista).

 

[DaveSimmons]

I work for a company that makes an assessment creation tool for WebCT and Blackboard (visit sunny www.respondus.com) and we're working on Vista support now.

This is of course personal opinion not endorsed or approved by my employer blah blah lawyer lawyer:

The quiz engine is about the same, though self-test support is improved: they're now created just like quizzes not using the "different" and limited self-test editing in 3.x/4.x Online editing / creation of questions is also about the same, they have not yet added any kind of visual editing.

Quiz reports also look about the same, nothing startling.

The big win I see for course content is the new structure where you can create one template for several sections of a course and then copy it down to each section, even though the copying is a one-way / one-time copy not a dynamic link.

By the way, WebCT has a webct-users@webct.com user discussion mailing list: "To subscribe send a message to majordomo@webct.com with only the following line in the body of the message: subscribe webct-users "

 

[Cruisin1]

I took an online class this summer and we used WebCT, good got it's a POS.

 

[SeaMonki]

WebCT has nothing but been evil to students! Makes us do extra discussion/reading/homework out of class...sucks!