Rutgers University Senate Committee on Instruction, Curricula, and Advising

Report on the Use of Course Management Systems

SUMMARY

Charge S-0318: Examine the various types of online instructional software (courseware) being utilized by departments and units at Rutgers. What are the consequences of using a growing number of different courseware products (sometimes even within an individual course) for faculty, staff and students? Determine whether Rutgers should decide upon and use a standard courseware product.

Current Rutgers Course Management Systems (CMS)

The three primary CMS currently in use at Rutgers are WebCT 4.1 College Edition, Blackboard 6, and eCollege/eCompanion. Several smaller systems with specialized features are also being used.

WebCT is currently being used primarily by New Brunswick undergraduate courses, Camden undergraduate courses, and a few Newark courses. Blackboard has been designated as the official Course Management System for Rutgers-Newark. eCollege supports Rutgers’ totally online courses; eCompanion can be used for any web-enhanced course.

In addition, Rutgers, through the office of Instructional and Research Technologies, has recently made an initial 3-year commitment to Sakai as a member of their Educational Partners Program. The Sakai program is a collaborative, open source development project that is working towards developing the framework and application tools for an integrated CMS that would also support intra and inter-institutional faculty collaboration and research. OIT already has several staff members working on Sakai CMS development.

At Rutgers most courses using CMS are web-enhanced courses rather than web-delivered (i.e., 100% online) courses.

Issues:

In Newark, the 2004 decision to adopt Blackboard as the official campus CMS was made at the provostial level and was accompanied by a systematic plan for implementation, training and support. However elsewhere in the University the situation is much more diffuse and unsettled. Rather than being the result of any systematic implementation, the initial adoption of a course management system seems to have a matter of individual faculty initiative or specific departmental need. As a result there are a number of issues including:

· The costs associated with supporting multiple systems

· The relatively low usage of existing systems

· The limited support available for training and course development

· The limited usage of system features

· The need for many students to become familiar with multiple platforms

· The lack of integration between the various course management systems and other administrative systems in the University

Costs:

At present, WebCT is costing the University approximately $60,000 annually; WebCT Vista would increase that cost to about $90,000. The annual cost for Blackboard is currently $55,000. eCollege costs $150,000 annually, although the online course transaction fee reduces that cost to about $25,000. With the exception of eCollege/eCompanion, these costs reflect only licensing and direct implementation. Staff support and training, hardware amortization, and other costs associated with maintaining a CMS are not routinely reported.

Usage of Existing Systems

While in the Fall of 2004 there were 251 sections (17,137 students) in New Brunswick and Camden using WebCT, that number represents less than 5 percent of the total sections offered on those campuses. There were another 105 sections (5493 students) using eCompanion.

Despite the fact that Blackboard was only designated as the ‘official’ Newark CMS in 2004, in the Fall of 2004, 13,122 students (44.7 percent of total enrolled) were in classes using Blackboard.

Support

In general, the level of support available to faculty at Rutgers for developing and improving web and web-enhanced courses seems more limited than that available at other institutions of our size.

Usage of System Features

As seems to be generally the case[1], the majority of Rutgers faculty using CMS are not taking advantage of most of the features available to them

Use of Multiple Platforms

While there are still significant differences between various CMS in terms of approaches in setting up a course, at this point differences in usage from the point of view of student users do not appear particularly significant

Integration with other Administrative Systems

There is a need to better integrate the various course management systems with other administrative systems in the University. Use of multiple systems has generally meant that even problems common to multiple systems have had to be approached and negotiated on an individual system basis.

Movement Towards a Single ‘Official’ CMS

There certainly would seem to be advantages to Rutgers moving toward the use of one primary course management system, especially if that system were to be systematically promoted and supported.

Which CMS should be chosen is not particularly clear-cut. But since the University has already made a significant commitment in terms of staffing for Sakai CMS development, certainly the results of that commitment should be given serious consideration.

We do not see an overwhelming impetus for a “single” Rutgers CMS as opposed to a “primary” Rutgers CMS at this time.

Recommendations:

1. Rutgers University should move toward the use of one primary course management system.

2. Both knowledgeable faculty and those not currently using course management systems should be involved in the selection process, and should be given the opportunity to specify the features they would deem necessary for any CMS that they would be likely to use.

3. Rutgers' Office of Instructional and Research Technology (OIRT) should consider the above faculty needs as they work on the development of the Sakai course management system.

4. Any pilot of the Sakai CMS should be contingent upon the majority of features generally found in course management systems being present.

5. Implementation of any primary course management system should follow the Newark model of planned and supported integration. Priority should be given to support for faculty training and assistance with course development.

6. Until such time as there is sufficient evidence that the chosen course management system can appropriately handle 100-percent online courses, eCollege should continue to be used for fully web-delivered courses.

7. Until such time as there is a perceived impetus to change, Blackboard should continue to be used as the primary Newark course management system.

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[1] The 2003 Educause study found that “use is concentrated on the content presentation within the CMS. Faculty members are much slower to adopt the more complex or interactive parts of the CMS, such as the discussion tools, quiz tools, or gradebooks….Faculty adopt course management systems principally to manage the more mundane tasks associated with teaching, especially teaching large classes.” (Morgan,, p. 2).