[Slightly OT?] Why It's Hard to Explain Rev

[Judy Perry]

I dunno... maybe I'm at the wrong educational institution, because I can
tell you that where I am, admin-types would vastly prefer to pay
bucketloads of dollars for something that "everybody" uses and "everybody"
has heard of as opposed to a validly competitive free product.

To wit:  from the California Virtual Campus consortium
(http://www.cvc4.org/newscopy/Current_Events/may_update.asp)

The state of California in 2003 paid the following fees to license
Blackboard as an online course delivery system:

25 courses:  $3,750
Unlimited:   $7,500
(I think this is per participating institution but could be wrong).

Ditto for WebCT:

Level One-CVC Consortia License
100 seats $1000
200 seats $2000
400 seats $4000
600 seats $6000
Level Two- Campus Focus License

3000 Seats $7500
6000 Seats $15000

Now, mind you, Moodle (http://www.moodle.org) is... (drum roll, please):

FREE.

And, now there's apparently a new kid on the block, CourseCompass
(http://info.coursecompass.com/website/faq-general.html) that is probably
still a 'nobody' but aims to be a 'somebody' or even an 'everybody' by
teaming up with the major educational publishing houses to make content
easily (exclusively?) available online via their system.

Judy

On Fri, 4 Nov 2005, Dan Shafer wrote:

> Tough one, Marty, because there are so many free languages out there
> that educational administrators' first knee-jerk reaction (as Andre
> says in his reply) is to look to cost. But if you can get them past
> that point then I imagine Judy Perry will have some compelling
> educational arguments to bolster such a position.