I'll give a witness to the godawfulness of WebCT, Jeff! How terrible is that tool? Let me count the ways.
1. Totally horseless carriage. All it does is strive to reproduce face-to-face old fashioned classroom tools online. 2. Teacher-centered instead of student-centered. When it comes to educational UCD means STUDENT-centered design. Maybe it got adopted more widely because it looked like a teacher's admin tool (a really CLUNKY teacher's admin tool), and teachers make those decisions, but from what I experienced with it (as a teacher in an intensely applied computer-assisted pedagogy classroom), most of the adoption decisions on it were made quite a bit higher up than individual professor- or teacher- level. Probably with an advisory committee, tho. Its servers worked (at least when I used it) and older teachers were immediately comfortable with it because it seemed to give them chalk and a chalkboard. 3. WebCT is Professor Yellow-Note's best friend. The best thing the tool supports is garbage-in, garbage-out memorization-style teaching. If you want to do anything innovative pedagogically, you spend half your time trying to work around or kludge around WebCT. And Blackboard wasn't much better. 4. Take a leaf from MIT's book: when it comes to educational materials, FIREWALLS SUCK. As well as professors who hide away and copyright their syllabi. Way to teach students about the free exchange of ideas, the importance of dialogue and debate in the Public Commons. Balkanize the entire pedagogical landscape already used for decades by teachers who have built careers out of teaching collaboration and collaborative tools, both with students and with colleagues. Teachers could use BLOG software and support more enriching courseware experiences than with all of the tools available in WebCT (except maybe the integration of uploading and downloading Excel to a central administration gradebook tied to the Registrar). Heh. I just had to go off on a rant there for a bit. As you were. Chris On Tue, 22 Jan 2008 17:33:46, Jeff Seager <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Andrew said: "Back to where I started, the effect of a bad interface > on, for example, a set of online learning materials, is to be a > distraction from the content and a slow-burn frustration for users. > This doesn't necessarily have any impact at point of sale." > > Well said. Especially true for educational software, where tens of > thousands of units may be sold before anyone uncovers the flaws. Or > cares, even if they do uncover them. > > Witness the ubiquitous WebCT, which I despise ... well, OK, let's > say I really dislike it. It was widely adopted not because it was a > great tool for the job, but because it was the best *available* tool > and the education community was clamoring for such a tool to make > distance learning more feasible -- which WebCT did, in its own clunky > way, to the frustration of many students undertaking coursework on the > Web. > > I look forward to the Next Big Thing in that market! It's probably > arrived by now. > > Your point's well-taken about content driving the educational > software market, too, Andrew. I think it should, but in this case the > content delivery system can be almost completely disregarded -- and > the real costs of that disregard (frustration, and ultimately > failure) can be passed along to the end user. > > It isn't a real-world market because the buyers are insulated from > the consequences of their flawed decisions. Happens a lot in > government, too; that's how we get $900 hammers and $600 toilet > seats for the U.S. Air Force. > > So in partial answer to this thread's overarching question, can we > say that crappy interfaces are far less likely to sell when the end > user is in control of spending, and can vote with his/her pocketbook? > > > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . > Posted from the new ixda.org > http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24918 > > > ________________________________________________________________ > *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* > February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA > Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
