Reading Area Community College Adopts WebCT to Support Institution-Wide Learning Goals.

LYNNFIELD, Mass. -- With e-learning Becoming a Central Offering, Educators Needed a Course Management System That 'Could Grow With the Campus'

Reading Area Community College, a two-year, 5,000-student institution in southeastern Pennsylvania, has adopted the WebCT Campus Edition(TM) course management system to take its e-learning program flexibly into the future.

Beginning this fall, RACC will use WebCT to enhance its courses with Web content and learning tools, including dedicated newsgroups, intracourse e-mail and online assessments. It will also deploy its first Web-based distance-learning course, English composition, for students whose schedules don't permit them to attend on-campus classes.

Over the next few years, RACC will integrate WebCT Campus Edition with its new Datatel student administration system, add to its stable of distance-learning courses, and migrate content from its video-based telecourses to the WebCT environment.

For the past four years, RACC has used a competitor's system to host its courses but determined that investing in the WebCT Campus Edition would improve teaching and learning in a wide variety of areas, including assessments, administration and integration.

"We looked at three course management system alternatives and quickly realized that WebCT's flexibility would be very important to our educational mission and that the product would grow with the campus," said Inez Whipple, director of RACC's teaching and learning center (TLC). "It was apparent we could do so much more with WebCT."

With WebCT, RACC will be able to easily customize course templates to ensure a standard look, feel and brand identity across courses. Faculty will be able to flexibly configure quizzes and tests, including assessments that present slightly different equations to each student - a way to discourage collaboration.

Administrators will be able to batch-upload student data, which will become an automatic process when the school's Datatel student administration system is installed. RACC students without an e-mail account will for the first time be able to receive course-related e-mail through WebCT. All students will experience around-the-clock technical support through WebCT's 24x7 Student and Faculty Support service.

"We are always encouraged when we have a chance to prove our flexibility," said Carol Vallone, WebCT president and CEO. "It's a tremendous opportunity to help colleges and universities experience the full potential of online education to reach their highest institutional goals."

About Reading Area Community College

Reading Area Community College offers over 90 programs of study to residents of Berks and surrounding counties. Students can choose from associate degrees, transfer and job training programs. The college awards associate in arts, associate in applied science and associate in general studies degrees, and also certificates and diplomas in numerous programs. For more information, please visit www.racc.edu.

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.