CMS PRICES SOAR AND OKI PROVIDES AN ALTERNATIVE - As prices for
Blackboard and WebCT course management systems (CMS) soar, an MIT- and
Stanford-led group is busy developing free software that will complement, and perhaps
rival, its high-priced predecessors. CMS market leaders Blackboard and WebCT have
come under criticism lately for increasing prices through flat-rate hikes, pricing structure
changes and the release of expensive new products such as WebCT's Vista. Although
both companies still offer lower-priced versions of their software with less functionality,
many academics are concerned that these products may be discontinued, leaving them
with the choice of paying more or playing catch-up to develop their own in-house
systems.

Last spring, a group of US universities joined together to create the Open Knowledge
Initiative (OKI) with the core objective of creating an architectural specification for
educational application development. In other words, the group is creating technical
standards that will ensure that new CMS can be shared among institutions and will be
compatible with proprietary software products (including, the group hopes, Blackboard
and WebCT) that adopt the standards. OKI is also using the standards to build its own
CMS tools that will help professors build web pages and handle administrative course
functions such as testing and grading. The Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI)
http://web.mit.edu/oki/ hopes to release its first set of free tools this summer.
(NETWORKING vol. 6 no 4, 17 Apr 02)