WebCT vs Blackboard

[Lynne deBenedette]

I second Michael Denner¹s endorsement of WebCT over Bb; Brown was
considering both Bb and WebCT; and the latter is way more flexible in terms
of choices about design and use.  I still would caution anyone wanting to
use either one with Cyrillic that it can be important 1) what version of the
program your institution buys‹we bought WebCT 3.8.2; and 2) how your own
computer people set the program up to run on their system.  At Brown we had
the default encoding for all foreign language webct pages set to UTF-8; if
anyone has specific questions about our setup, I can refer you to our
Computing Services.  I have no trouble writing in webct in Russian--meaning
in webct's dialog boxes, as in for posting to discussion gps or using
webct's content creation functions--from a windows machine (98, 2000 and XP
all work).  That is the only thing I cannot do on a Mac running 10.1.5, but
everything else works, including uploading any kind of word file IF I first
save it as a web page and specify UTF-8 encoding, uploading dreamweaver
files, etc.  (By the way, if anyone has encountered and solved the Mac OSX
problem I describe, I would appreciate your help.)

Note that if you are a Mac user, the Respondus test generator is for windows
machines, although you could conceivably run it if you have Virtual PC or
some other emulation software installed.

Lynne deBenedette
Senior Lecturer in Russian
Brown University / Slavic Languages
20 Manning Walk, Box E
Providence, RI 02912
tel 401-863-7572 or 401-863-2689
fax 401-863-7330
lynne_debenedette at brown.edu
SPRING 2003 Office Hours TBA

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