A new version of the online course management system WebCT, which Brown is calling MyCourses, will be used by approximately 75 percent of courses that have Web sites this semester, according to Pat Zudeck, a senior instructional technologist for Computing and Information Services and head of the Instructional Technology Group.
MyCourses is similar to the previous version of WebCT but includes a redesigned user interface and several new features, including easier content upload, an instant messaging tool and an improved grade book for both faculty and students.
The widely expanded use of MyCourses represents a final phase of the effort to upgrade the University's course Web sites to the new version, which has been in testing by ITG for more than a year. Small pilot programs run by the group this spring and summer involved 27 and 55 courses, respectively.
"We're really happy about it," said Alan Usas, assistant vice president for academic and network systems and services, of the percentage of courses that have successfully migrated to the new version this semester. He said expectations for the fall semester had at one time modestly predicted the number of courses that would use the new version at about 150. The actual number using MyCourses this semester is almost twice that.
As of Sept. 6, 294 courses were running MyCourses, while just 99 were using the old version, still called WebCT. Zudeck said she expects even more courses to sign up for either MyCourses or WebCT this semester, anticipating "well over 400" in total, which would represent about half of all courses offered at the University.
Though MyCourses and WebCT are offered in parallel this semester, ITG plans to complete the transition to the newer version in January and hopes to no longer operate WebCT by that time. The new version, in addition to having new cosmetic and functional additions, is more technologically robust, running an Oracle database, something Usas called an important "invisible change."
Zudeck said the number of courses that remain on the old version represent faculty who either have not had time to upgrade or who are postponing migration due to lingering issues with the new version, notably problems with the software's image database tool,. Though used extensively by only a few departments, this feature has been criticized by users for its clumsiness.
"Right now, either version is problematic," wrote Evelyn Lincoln, associate professor of history of art and architecture, in an e-mail to The Herald describing the image database tool in both WebCT and MyCourses.
One problem with the software is that it does not allow the user to look at more than one image at once, Lincoln wrote. And while the old version of WebCT at least offered thumbnail images, and thus one rough way of looking at multiple images at once, MyCourses does away with the thumbnail altogether, replacing it with what Lincoln called "a very silly and not very useful icon."
Lincoln also described difficulty with changing the content of her image-heavy course page once it had been set up.
"This database is, as a colleague of mine once put it rather graphically," Lincoln wrote, "like a gorilla when it has eaten too many bananas - the longer you work with the databases to upload files and move them around, the slower and heavier and less responsive the process becomes." Lincoln added this difficulty has the effect of discouraging making changes to course content from year to year.
"It seemed less work to stick with WebCT," wrote Dietrich Neumann, professor of history of art and architecture, in an e-mail to The Herald, because the transfer of his old material to WebCT had worked much better than the transfer to MyCourses. Neumann added, though, that he will "certainly switch" to the new version for the spring semester.
Zudeck acknowledged that "we don't have a good system" in place for image uploading, storage and organization, and added, "If someone had an image database in the old system, we recommend that they stay in the old system."
But she also said that most of the issues with MyCourses have been straightened out since this spring, when a slight majority of 94 students and nine faculty respondents to a survey of the pilot program reported problems with the product.
ITG does a great deal of work to ease the transition to MyCourses for faculty. Three instructional technologists, including Zudeck, perform "quality checks" on each course that migrates and teach 30-minute training sessions for faculty in the Watson Center of Information and Technology.
On Friday afternoon, Kathryn Rotondo, one of the technologists, was leading a small class of just two, though she said that "two to three weeks ago, we had 12 to 15 in each class." The interest in MyCourses, overall, she said, is "pretty overwhelming."
It remains to be seen how students will respond to the new features of MyCourses once the semester gets fully underway, but initial reaction was mostly indifferent.
"Slightly more user-friendly, still something of a hassle," said Molly Cohen '09.
Usas emphasized the benefit a student gains by having a "common interface" for his or her courses on the web. "We have students tell us that they specifically chose a particular course because it was on WebCT," he said. "I hope there are more reasons that that, but it's a factor."
Brown, Usas said, is about "on par with our peers" in the use of online educational tools like MyCourses, noting that sites like WebCT were originally developed for, and are used extensively by, large institutions which support tens of thousands of students. He emphasized that his role at Brown was not to aggressively promote the use of MyCourses's features but simply to offer faculty the tools they need to do their jobs most effectively.
"People can pick and choose what makes sense for them," he said. "My job isn't to mandate technology." Usas said he expects use of MyCourses to grow, but "because faculty members and students see a reason for using it," he said, "as opposed to just technology for technology's sake."
