WebCT is the web-based course management system used at the University of West Virginia. They are at a similar stage in planning a migration from the Standard Edition to the Campus Edition to the Vista Edition.
Planned WebCT Upgrades
Currently, WVU uses version 3.7.2 of WebCT Campus Edition. We are planning to do upgrades during the spring semester that will integrate WebCT with SCT Banner for implementation in the first summer term of 2003. Following that upgrade, we anticipate migrating from WebCT Campus Edition to WebCT Vista (see online Vista tutorial). We plan to undergo a testing and piloting phase with this project that will include courses from both the general university and Health Sciences prior to implementation for the entire University for the first summer term of 2004.
Why do the Upgrades?
The integration with SCT Banner promises some significant new features. WebCT courses are currently only created when they are requested by an Instructor. After the integration ALL courses will be created automatically (only courses with content will be visible to students so that they aren't confused by all the unused courses). Additionally, courses will be automatically synchronized with SCT Banner so that students are added and dropped from courses automatically. Another benefit will be that all WebCT and MIX users will use a single username and password to access both systems. Although it will be technically possible to export grades from WebCT to Banner we are expecting to do the integration without initially enabling this feature.