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[school-discuss] Re: [IIEP] CityU HK



Maccann, Ann wrote:

The institution I am at - the Open and Training Network in Technical and
Further Education in NSW Australia - changed away from Blackboard to a
proprietary product called Janison, partly because of expense, partly as
Blackboard is set up for unis with their course nomenclature, and we had
different ways of referring to things.  You had to put a separate page
in if you weren't using their templates, so students had to log in, move
to the course page, then move to a third page if they were using
software that wasn't in a Blackboard template.  It all got quite
confusing!
I assume that CityU can afford BlackBoard.

We have BlackBoard but we got it via a grant and we are quite concerned
with the annual licensing fee (we're not only small we're poor). We
explored the idea of switching to a free (with a small f) solution last
year. Have been able to put it off.

FOSS software is also infinitely customizable but you need to have the
resources and skills to do so. There is probably a market for
installation, customization, and hosting services -- something like the
Pilot Online Training someone mentioned but with FOSS.
--
Dr. Robert G. Rittenhouse, Chair
Department of Computer Science
McMurry University, Abilene, TX 79697-0968