In-house would seem to be the norm outside of the English speaking
world. One good example is Pontifical Universidad Catolica de Peru which
I visited some years ago. They have a very comprehensive VLE which is
entirely home grown and I get the impression that they have a
substantial team of developers. (The staff costs are probably much lower
in Peru and as its a non-commercial activity they can probably make use
of computer science students for free.)
In a way I find it odd that the commercial products have penetrated so
deeply into the British market. The job that they do is really not that
complex compared to substantial software products like word processors
and databases. If you compare the cost of creating your own against the
cost of licensing a commercial offering for three or four years I think
any largish university would find the former much cheaper than the
later, even if they hired a professional company to do the work. An even
cheaper option would be to take the most suitable open source product
and use that as the basis for the home grown VLE - paying the
programmers to simply adapt it to your needs. To select a suitable
starting product just ignore all the little tools in the VLE (which you
can create yourselves to your own specification) and study the
underlying architecture. Which is the most flexible and robust? Can the
navigation scheme be radically altered? Can the appearance be easily
customised?
Jon
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