Coursetools for Developing Academic Web Courses
Three years ago, the College of Engineering selected an online coursetool (also called courseware) called Prometheus. At that time, UT's central campus instructional technology services offered a comparable tool, WebCT. We selected Prometheus because it was an open source tool (allowing us to customize) and because it was well-designed and user-friendly. Fast forward to today. Central Campus no longer provides WebCT and instead supports BlackBoard. As these course tools grow in complexity so does their price tag. Our original license to Prometheus was affordable; most off-shelf course tools costs are prohibitive. Add to the mix, Prometheus was purchased by Blackboard Inc. in early 2002.
The last day of June our Prometheus license will expire. However, all course material currently in Prometheus will continue to be available through UTwired Archive. The UTwired Archive is not courseware like Prometheus. The contents of the Archive cannot be edited and re-uploaded into the Archive, nor will students have access to the Archive. The Archive's sole purpose is to ensure that you do not lose any course material.
We are now in the process of reviewing our coursetool options. Blackboard is available (http://www.utexas.edu/cc/blackboard/index.html) as is UT's CLIPS (Class Informational Pages). We are questioning if either of these products will fit your needs or if we need to provide an additional open source course tool that will be housed and supported by the FIC. Several universities, including MIT and Stanford, are working on a courseware project aimed to develop “"meaningful, coherent, modular, easy-to-use, web-based environments for assembling, delivering and accessing educational resources and activities." This effort, know as the Open Knowledge Initiative (http://web.mit.edu/oki/), is developing prototype open source courseware that we are evaluating for use in the College.
We welcome your suggestions as we go through this decision making process. Of course you are always welcome to contact any of us at utwiredsupport@engr.utexas.edu, but we have two specific upcoming ways to gather information.
Also, please join us for a faculty focus group to discuss coursetool options and your needs. We'll provide pizza so we'll need a head count. Please RSVP by 5:00 pm on March 19th to John Winn at jonjon.winn@mail.utexas.edu or 471-3855
When: March 20th
Where: 10th floor of ECJ, Large conference room
Time: Noon
Note: Even if you can't attend the focus group, we'd appreciate your written comments.
FIC Collects 2003 Texas Interactive Outstanding Media Achievement Award at SXSW
The Texas Interactive Outstanding Media Achievement Award, presented by the Austin Area Multimedia Alliance in conjunction with SXSW, recognizes the year's best new media projects produced in the state. This year the honor went to the Faculty Innovation Center's UTMB Self Teaching System (STS) CD-ROM, developed by Justin Cone (with Erik Zumalt and Ryan Weston) for The University Medical Branch in Galveston.
The CD-ROM teaches auscultation, the science of detecting and diagnosing cardiac illness with a stethoscope. This is an increasingly neglected topic in medical schools across the nation. Yet auscultation has a proven track-record of being a vital, dependable tool for physicians in a wide variety of settings. To address this educational deficit, Dr. William Thornton of UTMB decided to develop a hybrid hardware/software system that could simulate the process of auscultation. Using real stethoscopes and specially designed transducers, students can see, hear and feel a virtual patient's heart sounds. This hands-on, self-teaching system saves medical school thousands of dollars while enhancing students' educational experiences and ensuring that a fundamental skill set is not neglected. The STS was piloted successfully with a group of over 200 students and is currently used every semester by UTMB medical students and professors.
This is the second award UTMB Self Teaching System (STS) CD-ROM has recieved.