A Call to Colleagues:

SEEKING SURVEYS AND OTHER STUDIES OF INSTITUTIONAL USES OF WEBCT, BLACKBOARD, LOTUS LEARNING SPACE, PROMETHEUS, AND OTHER WEB COURSE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

 

Flashlight, a program of the non-profit Teaching, Learning, and Technology Group (an affiliate of the American Association for Higher Education) is gathering studies that colleges, universities, corporations, schools and others may have done of their uses of Web Course Management Systems (WCMS).  We hope to learn from all these studies and, if the authors are willing, to make at least some of them freely available from links on our Web site.  We also intend to develop a study package to help institutions study and improve their own uses of WCMSs; studies we find would be referenced in such a study package.

 

* We are interested in studies that seek to find out how an institution's system has been used, how it hasn't been used, what kinds of support and training were successful or unsuccessful, and what factors affect the system's use for different purposes. 

* We are interested in surveys, focus groups, data collection by the systems themselves, and other means of investigation. 

* We are especially interested in studies that produced findings that were seen as useful by the institution (e.g., helped to confirm or alter arrangements for training or support; helped confirm or alter decisions about what WCMS to use). 

* We are also interested in studies that helped document whether the system was of educational benefit to students, departments or the institution as a whole.

* We are interested in studies of the obvious and hidden costs (including time) of maintaining such systems.

 

If you have done such a study could you please send us a copy or a URL?  We'd also like to talk with you about whether or how you might improve the study design.

If you know of such a study, could you tell us how we can find it?

If you would like to help critique such studies, please let us know of your interest.

 

Please send your information and suggestions to Helen Parke parkeh@mail.ecu.edu or Steve Ehrmann (Ehrmann@tltgroup.org). Thanks!

 

Helen Parke, East Carolina University

 

PS If you are interested in Flashlight, see http://www.tltgroup.org/programs/flashlight.html.  The button called "resources" on the left is a gateway to a library of 100 articles, case studies, online presentations and other free resources.  Flashlight evaluation tools are also available for site license.  Institutions that join the Flashlight Network (currently numbering about 50 institutions around the world) get the most support and have the opportunity (like East Carolina University) to help guide the future development of Flashlight.