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Which to select? |
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We advise you to try our OnLine courseware comparison system (currently available only in Croatian) whose goal it is to try to give you a unified advice about which of the tools is the best for you. Also, before selecting a particular tool, visit the pages of its manufacturer, in order to get acquainted in detail with the tools' possibilities, standards it meets, user support etc. | | |
Before selecting a tool you should know which criteria are important for you. One thing you should keep in mind is whether a tool is SCORM compliant and if so, what standards does it support. It will save you time as well as money and stop you from selecting the wrong tool.
If you don't know which criteria are important for your situation, we have listed some of our subjective opinions about the tools we tested. Even though our evaluation of user interface and intuitive use are based on standards accepted by the filed, take our suggestions with a grain of salt since the criteria are different for different users.
Tools which meet many criteria
According to our testing WebCT and BlackBoard meet the most criteria. However, they did not strike us as simple and logical, so we would not recommend them even to people who have used similar systems before. In our opinion these tools are for advanced users only.
The advantage of WebCT is that CARNet currently has enough WebCT licences. That means that you can arrange to test what it looks like and how it works, and you can, of course, have all your courses in it. The greatest advantage of WebCT is in mathematics, since it has a good program which enables easy entering and changing of mathematical formulas, as well as a quiz which generates questions based on mathematical functions you entered.
Blackboard has a web page with a 30 day trial period where you can see what it looks like from both the professor's and student's point of view. We recommend you to try one of these programs before buying courseware.
Easy to use
Courseware tool that impressed us with its easy use is Intralearn. Apart from its simplicity and intuitive use, it meets a great number of criteria.
The tool can be localized for Croatian language and supports a great number of SCORM standards. It also greatly helps that the manufacturer is unusually attentive, something we did not notice with other commercial programs providers.
The only fault we could detect is that it is not free, but if you have the funds, do not omit this tool when you are considering courseware purchase.
Free courseware
There are two tools in close competition for the best free courseware -Claroline and Moodle. Both of these tools are intuitive and easy to use, and they support localization and installation in Croatian. We recommend Claroline since it meets a greater number of criteria.
Ostali alati za e-obrazovanje
During our analysis we noticed that a large number of tools declared as courseware are quite undefined and many lack a lot of functionalities, which can also be notices in the results of the tool testing. Some of the programs are hard to install and their use is not intuitive. If you are considering selecting some other program, we advise you to take a look at our page for the selection of appropriate tools.
Standards
If a tool you choose is compliant with some of the standards accepted in the field and industry, you have additionally protected your time and effort investment as the author of the content, since in case of changing courseware you will not have to waste time on its readjustment. ADL/SCORM is imposed on the market as the most prominent standard. On the other hand, more important than the standards is the quality and comfort (and sometimes the price) of a tool, so be careful that a provider's attempt to sell a tool is not covering a solution which for you, for one reason or another, is not optimal or good quality.
Summary
We advise you to try our OnLine courseware comparison system, whose goal it is to try to give you a unified advice about which of the tools is the best for you. Also, before selecting a particular tool, visit the pages of its manufacturer, in order to get acquainted in detail with the tools' possibilities, standards it meets, user support etc.
