NEW E-LEARNING HUB, WebCT.COM, OFFERS HOMEWORK HELP, `BEST OF BREED` RESEARCH TOOLS FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS AND EDUCATORS
Higher Education Destination Site Features 70 Academic Communities with Top Research Sources, “Ask an Expert” Help, Content and Collaboration Tools
LYNFIELD, MA--(COLLEGIATE PRESSWIRE)--Sept. 26, 2000--WebCT, the provider of the leading online course management system announced today the launch of WebCT.com
(http://www.webct.com/change), its expanded e-Learning Hub, the first academic destination site for higher education. WebCT.com promises to be an invaluable new academic resource for students, for whom the Internet has become as essential as textbooks: 14.5 million college students (97 percent of all students) use the Internet today, spending an average of 19 hours per week online, 85 percent of the time on academic pursuits.*
WebCT.com, which encompasses 70 different discipline-based learning communities, is an academic destination that offers students faculty-led homework help and “best of breed” research resources. The site even has an “Ask an Expert” feature, with hundreds of experts in a wide variety of academic disciplines who answer questions and providing research assistance. WebCT.com is also a virtual “academy” where students, teachers, and lifelong learners can come together to share and collaborate across academic and institutional boundaries. More information about e-Learning Hub can be found at
http://www.webct.com/change.
In communities that range from Astronomy to Zoology, visitors will find:
+ Course materials - faculty can buy resource materials for their online classes, and students can purchase electronic texts, chapters and other class materials from top educational publishers or individual faculty authors.
+ Resource libraries - the enduring collaborations and conversations, as well as class, teaching and research materials created by students, faculty, researchers and professionals. Students can compare reading lists, lecture notes for classes from schools across the country or the world.
+ Ask-an-expert services, such as “Ask Dr. Math,” provide answers to students’ questions while allowing teachers and learners to create a deep collection of answers to questions about a subject that can be used by future students. The interactions of the community create the ongoing resource.
+ “Problem of the Week” gives students a chance to test out their growing knowledge and skills as they tackle a subject.
+ E-Colloquia - lectures and symposia featuring distinguished scholars and notable guests can allow subject matter experts to be more easily brought into many classrooms, either live or through rich archives of those original broadcasts and discussions.
+ Peer mentoring projects - allow learners to become teachers and teachers to become learners.
+ Topical discussions - These discussions become the true heart of the communities, where constructive debate, sharing, collaboration and mentoring happen around a specific academic topic.
+ Original content -- each community is led by an expert in the area who oversees the development of timely original content.
+ Professional mentoring programs - Professional associations are partnering with the e-Learning Hub to offer their members access to academic resources for accreditation as well as to allow their members to serve as mentors to students.
* Source: Merrill Lynch, “The Knowledge Web,” May 23, 2000.
The e-Learning Hub meets a huge demand among higher education faculty and students. Even though nearly 40% of classes used the Internet as a syllabus resource, faculty members have had to search the Internet themselves, looking for, and vetting material for their students. Students went through a similar process, searching for resources and trying to form e-mail circles to share information. The e-Learning Hub has been welcomed enthusiastically by WebCT customers who have been testing the site since early September.
“We were really excited to see the e-Learning Hub become available,” said Diane Oerly, of the University of Missouri/Columbia. Our faculty were seeking an environment in which faculty can communicate with other faculty and share resources within and across academic disciplines. So we were really pleased to see WebCT respond to that need to have learning communities that are focused at the discipline level but could span the world.”
Examples of the e-Learning Hub in Use
An English professor at the University of Georgia has brought the e-Learning Hub to his classroom by imbedding materials and resources from the site into the online class. As students read the online syllabus, they are automatically linked to the e-Learning Hub to buy their online textbook and read guides on term paper writing and plagiarism. Throughout the term, the professor sends alerts to students about discussions of interest taking place in the English community on the e-Learning Hub. An astronomy student uses the e-Learning Hub to find out about an online briefing with NASA scientists and e-mails her classmates to attend the chat. She hosts a discussion following the chat and adds the discussion to the e-Learning Hub where other scientists and researchers respond to questions and add their perspective on the NASA announcements.
High school students visit the e-Learning Hub throughout the term to Ask Dr. Math questions about their theories and try to answer the “question of the day.” They also test theory ideas with other community visitors and share their research and thinking with other students, researchers and professionals interested in the same topics all around the world.
About WebCT
WebCT provides the leading e-learning environment to the higher education marketplace. This robust e-learning environment integrates WebCT, the most popular course management system in the world and
WebCT.com, The e-Learning Hub. WebCT.com is the first higher education destination site to offer both faculty and students online teaching and learning resources to a community of peers across discipline and institutional boundaries. Today, more than 48,500 faculty use WebCT to teach at 1,500 colleges and universities in 57 countries. Currently, WebCT is used to deliver or enhance courses totaling more than 6.9 million student accounts - a key metric for the industry, indicating the product’s widespread deployment at higher education institutions. These statistics don’t include more than 800 K-12 schools and almost 100 corporate customers who are also using WebCT, or about 7,500 others who are currently conducting free trials. More than 42,400 faculty provide links from their online courses to WebCT.com, The e-Learning Hub, and more than 1,368,000 college students had visited the hub this spring (Q2 Brand Intelligence). The Company has offices in Lynnfield, MA, and Swarthmore, PA, in the U.S., as well as Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. More information about the company and its integrated e-learning environment can be found at
http://www.webct.com/change.
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