The nice folks from WebCT came to our campus today (University of Oklahoma) to make a presentation on WebCT 4.0. WebCT has always had the reputation of being the “smarter” course management system, and after a year spent in the persistent vegetative state that is Blackboard, I was curious what WebCT would offer. The major change from the version of WebCT that I have worked with is the introduction of a WebDAV utility. This means that I can drag-and-drop materials from my desktop into my folder on the WebCT server. So there is a seamless connection between my computer desktop and the WebCT server on our campus.
But what does that have to do with the web? Is it with the web… or against it?
In other words: how is WebCT using this technology to contribute to the ongoing growth and vitality of the web as a resource for teachers and students?
It seems to me that WebCT is not building the web, but preying upon it. It feeds on the web, but gives nothing back. WebCT makes it possible for instructors to link and link and link to other people’s websites, while contributing nothing back to the web for others to link to, for others to use.
In fact, one of the major themes of the WebCT presentation was that “you don’t need a website anymore - not like you used to!”. Hmmmmm….. since when is it a good thing to give up your website? I understand wanting better tools to manage your website, tools to make it less time-consuming, tools to make your website more useful, tools to integrate your website with other kinds of technologies beyond the desktop monitor. That would be great!
But why on earth would we want to reduce the number of websites and hide our work behind the walls of WebCT? I get email on a daily basis about my online course websites - currently Folklore-Mythology and Medieval Latin. I am proud to say that my unit on Hrotsvitha is the top-listed site for that name in Google. Hrotsvitha was a 10th-century playwright and poet, and the abbess of a Benedictine monastery - and I am so happy to think that the materials I assembled for the week we spend studying her work could be of use to anyone who is looking for information about this writer online.
Meanwhile, my Hrabanus Maurus unit is the second-listed site in Google for that author, just behind the amazing online edition of Hrabanus Maurus’ De Rerum Naturis, a labor of love by William Schipper. I have never met William Schipper, but I consider him to be a valued colleague, and I am proud to have my website stand beside his wonderful contribution to online scholarship. What possible reason would there be for me to take my contribution to teaching and learning about Hrotsvitha and Hrabanus Maurus, just to name two examples, and lock them away in WebCT? Ah, the WebCT pitch continues, the point is not just that “you don’t need to have a website!” - in fact, you don’t even need to create course materials anymore! Look at all these publisher E-packs! And they are “free for instructors!” (only the students have to pay).
Don’t get me wrong - I am not against textbooks. But at the same time, I have to question a system that makes it easy for instructors to access publishers’ commercial and copyrighted materials - while actively preventing other instructors from viewing and using my course materials, since my course materials would now be locked down inside WebCT, no longer directly addressable on the web, no longer indexed by Google. Unlike the publishers’ materials, my website is free for instructors and free for students! And unlike a business corporation, I do not have to reach an audience of millions or even thousands to break even. Ask my tiny posse of Latin students: we are all finding our online study of Hrotsvitha and Hrabanus to be highly profitable.
William Schipper put the De Rerum Naturis online because he is a true scholar, and a generous person. Thanks to William Schipper’s genius and generosity, I am able to offer my students a great week studying and learning about Hrabanus Maurus. When I search for Hrabanus Maurus at Google, there is William Schipper’s online text, right up at the top. And there is my course, next in line. And that is why I take the time and trouble to develop my own online learning materials. Just in case somebody out there is also desperately seeking Hrabanus Maurus.
BTW I did go and search for Hrbanus Maurus in the WebCT E-pack listing. Results: none.
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The number of now-defunct companies who have 1) underestimated the communal power of the Web and 2) underestimated the intelligence and real needs of the end-users is very very long.
One major mistake of WebCT and other like companies is that they have been lulled by a temporary reality in which they sell a product to an intermediary instead of the the actual end user. Theachers don’t buy their product and students don’t even get any unput.
But what the Web has shown, again and again, is that it is a truly disruptive force and will, eventually, effect change in such processes. Publishers are already scrambling to “up-sell” to students who, until now never really entered into the sales picture (i.e. they have no say in what books are actually used).
The Web bypasses all centralized systems and their accompanying processes (like WebCT and BlackBoard). These products, regardless of how anchored they seem today, will fail precisely because they are “anti” Web. Their pricing, and what the represent for education, will make them extinct by the endof the decade.