Brandeis University Selects WebCT Vista for Powerful, Efficient Management of Fast-Growing Academic Enterprise.Business Editors/Education Writers/High-Tech Writers WALTHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 22, 2004 Private residential liberal arts liberal arts, term originally used to designate the arts or studies suited to freemen. It was applied in the Middle Ages to seven branches of learning, the trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. university near Boston to share, reuse 'learning objects' across sections, courses and curriculums Brandeis University Brandeis University, at Waltham, Mass.; coeducational; chartered and opened 1948. Although Brandeis was founded by members of the American Jewish community, the university operates as an independent, nonsectarian institution. , a world-class research institution with a liberal arts focus, has selected WebCT Vista WebCT Vista is a teaching and learning enterprise software run and developed by Blackboard. It is principally used by universities and other education institutions as classroom management software, and as a distance education service. (TM) to graduate from course-by-course e-learning to systematic management of its academic systems. With this decision, Brandeis becomes the first institution in Massachusetts to adopt WebCT Vista. The new academic enterprise system will enable Brandeis to easily accommodate exponential growth Extremely fast growth. On a chart, the line curves up rather than being straight. Contrast with linear. in e-learning usage into the future. The university also will be able to initiate a wide range of new capabilities and programs. For example, when the system goes live in the fall of 2005, the 3,100-student residential university will offer faculty and library personnel a single WebCT Vista-based repository containing shared, reusable learning objects for assembling new courses. The university will seamlessly integrate online courses with its new PeopleSoft student information system. WebCT Vista will allow the university to continue to incorporate library resources, such as scanned documents or online publications, into any course. As a residential school, Brandeis's current focus is on offering Web-enhanced courses rather than pure distance-learning courses. With WebCT Vista, Brandeis for the first time will be able to provide selectively secure access to its e-learning system so that student employees assisting in course development can create courses without access to confidential information Noun 1. confidential information - an indication of potential opportunity; "he got a tip on the stock market"; "a good lead for a job" steer, tip, wind, hint, lead . Faculty will also be able to upload course content and download student assignments by dragging and dropping in Dropping in is a skateboarding trick with which a skateboarder can start skating a half-pipe by dropping into it from the coping instead of starting from the bottom and pumping gradually for more speed. a Windows Explorer See Explorer. file system rather than performing cumbersome one-at-a-time uploads and downloads. "Even though we're a private residential college, we very much need enterprise capabilities," said Brandeis CIO CIO: see American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations. (Chief Information Officer) The executive officer in charge of information processing in an organization. Perry Hanson, a published authority on course management systems. "Our Web-enhanced course count has grown dramatically the past three years, and we're pushing 400 courses. Consequently, scalability is critical to us. And as the world's knowledge goes digital, it's increasingly imperative to give students an efficient way to consume that knowledge and faculty a powerful way to deliver it. We've selected WebCT Vista because of the company's impeccable references, the system's flexible database architecture, its content management capabilities, and its powerful teaching and learning tools." Brandeis has used the WebCT Standard Edition and WebCT Campus Edition(TM) course management systems for the past six years and in a broad-based survey last year found that a significant percentage of students and faculty found Web-enhanced learning more "efficient and effective" than courses without Web tools. Brandeis has recently implemented groundbreaking initiatives. In summer 2003 library and IT staff came together to support all on-line course materials through WebCT, making use of WebCT features to replace the "E-Reserves" system, a costly, duplicative piece of library software providing access to library holdings and research. The institution is also using WebCT to deliver streamed audio lessons for foreign language students around the clock, enabling the department to shelve shelve v. shelved, shelv·ing, shelves v.tr. 1. To place or arrange on a shelf. 2. audiotapes and dramatically update the lab's offerings. "Enterprise-scale e-learning isn't just for large public universities," said WebCT President and CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. Carol Vallone. "The world's most prestigious private institutions large and small are recognizing the need for the flexible architecture, relational database relational database Database in which all data are represented in tabular form. The description of a particular entity is provided by the set of its attribute values, stored as one row or record of the table, called a tuple. back end, content management and advanced teaching and learning tools that WebCT Vista provides. Brandeis is leading the movement and setting an example many others will surely follow." About Brandeis University Brandeis is the youngest private research university in the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. and the only nonsectarian university in the nation founded by members of the American Jewish community. Named for the late Louis Dembitz Brandeis, the distinguished justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Brandeis was founded in 1948. The university is consistently ranked among the country's top research institutions. About WebCT WebCT has set the standard for e-learning systems in higher education. Based in Lynnfield, Mass., WebCT provides a highly flexible e-learning environment that empowers institutions across the educational spectrum with the ability to achieve their unique objectives. Thousands of colleges and universities around the world - from community colleges to large university consortia - are using WebCT to expand the boundaries of teaching and learning. For more information, please visit www.webct.com. |
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