What Are CourseInfo and WebCT?

CourseInfo and WebCT help faculty build, conduct, and manage courses on the Web. Both are fully Web-based. Anything you can do on the Web, you can do in CourseInfo and WebCT.

Common features

There are a number of significant features provided by both CourseInfo and WebCT. Some of the most useful are in the area of online communications. Each product includes tools to post announcements, a calendar, bulletin boards, chat and e-mail.

Both also include assessment tools that support multiple-choice, true or false, fill in the blank, matching, and essay questions. Only essay questions are not automatically graded.

Gradebooks allow students to view their own grades online if the instructor desires. Student tracking gives instructors a way to roughly measure how actively students are using the course site and what materials are most frequently requested.

In both products, instructors control access to course content. Instructors can develop courses online, keeping their work in progress hidden from students' view until they are ready to make it available.

Differences

CourseInfo is the younger product; it is not as powerful or fully-featured as WebCT but has a consistent and well-designed interface for both faculty and students. The majority of faculty and staff prefer CourseInfo for its ease of use.

WebCT, the more mature product, is more customizable and contains more features than CourseInfo. It is universally considered to be more difficult for faculty to use.

WebCT is also a closed learning system. You cannot view content in any course unless you are on the roster for that class.

CourseInfo is a more open system. If you have a CourseInfo account, you can view content, except the communications area, of any course unless the instructor has restricted access.

We have noted over the past two years that the developers are following one anothers' lead in improving features and ease of use. It is likely that this trend will continue in future cycles of development, and that the two products will become more similar.

Statistics

For the Fall 2002 semester:

Number of courses in CourseInfo: 569
Number of courses in WebCT: 40

For the Spring 2002 semester:

Number of courses in CourseInfo: 470
Number of courses in WebCT: 35

Cumulative (Fall 2002):

Number of users in CourseInfo: 33,357
Number of users in WebCT: 3,454