At 12:43 01/07/2004 +0000, S. Ambrose said:
>Some market leaders are moving towards conformance with
>industry standards such as IMS and SCORM and hence it should
>be easier to both migrate material and divorce from this type of
>VLE (if required). For example WebCT 4.1CE includes an IMS
>content migration utility and more of the embedded tools such as
>self test now include a download option to ensure that work effort is
>not trapped within the product.
To be fair, the article isn't saying that Blackboard isn't conforming with
industry standards. (the BB web site makes it clear that "Blackboard
supports content specifications such as IMS, AICC, SCORM and Microsoft's
LRN.".
What the article does seem to be saying is that once organisations have
invested heavily in a particular product, there's a disincentive to move
away from that product - and that may well be the case even if it is
technically easy to move the content from one VLE to another. The problem
will surely be that in an institution where VLE use has moved beyond the
pilot stage, maybe hundreds of staff, and thousands of students, will have
got used to using a particular VLE - to make the shift to a new one, with
all the disruption and staff development that might involve, could be very
timeconsuming and expensive. So in that sense, I think there probably is
lock-in to a given product. It's always easier to stay with what you know.
That's why most of use use Word, rather than free word processors, or IE,
rather than some other browser.
Of course, lock-in, as the article points out, works for other companies
and products too!
Geoff Minshull
Direct Learn Training
Main web site: http://www.directlearn.co.uk/
Online conference site: http://www.online-conference.net
Tel: 01629 540386
Mob: 0771 264 7600
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