Potential VC Systems and Their Feaures

The following table is a summary of the features provided in each of the systems being evaluated for the Virtual Classroom. This list is a slightly modified version of the survey conducted in March 1997.

Attributes

WebBoard

Collabra

Notifications

Notice sent to user's external mail address when new items posted.

-

E-Mail

No

-

Conference

Membership Types:

Moderator (allows multiple mods for a single conf.), read only, full participant

-

Conference Types:

Public, Private, Read-only, Verified (new postings entered only after moderator approval), Unmoderated

-

Notebooks ( edit each other's comments )

No

-

Directory (finding people)

Search by first or last name, list all members, list all members whose names begin with [letter].

-

Information Overload (keys, search)

 No keys. Global and conference searches. Text and topics (subject).

-

Provide access to other resources

 

-

Client View Customizing

 

-

Synchronous Support (Chat & Whiteboard)

Chat only.

-

Class Support

Question Activity:

No

-

Gradebook Activity:

No

-

Exam Activity:

No

-

Survey Activity:

No

-

Web Pages

No (can point to web pages within text).

-

Items Support:

Multiple Signatures Types

 Regular and anonymous.

-

Routing

 

-

Multiple document formats

Attachments allowed - not clear what type.

-

Archiving

By # of messages in conference and # of days in system.

-

Client Types

Off-line Support

 

-

VT-100 Client

No

-

Web based Client

 

-

Web based Client access only

 

-

External Mail Support

 No internal mail system.

-

Multi Media Support

 

-

Privacy

 

-

Privileges

Administrator is only person who can add conferences.

-

Administration Support

System can operate
24 hrs a day 7 days a week.

 

-

System is reliable

Yes, during our very light testing

-

Help desk functions:

 

-

Staff Resources Required

 

-

Training Required / Available

 

-

Documentation

 

-

Development Support

 

-

Research Support

Open system

 

-

Statistics per user for all conferences and mail:

Yes, just total # of items

-

Statistics per user for a specific conference.

No

-

Experiments:

 

-

Additional Items:

Item numering heirarchy to allow easy travers conversations

No

Group authoring support

No

 -

Group Decision support/groupware

No

 -

User tailorable filing/doc. Storage

No

 -

Distributed confereces

No

 -

Easy Upload & download

Cut and Paste

 -

HTML and Forms support

HTML

 -

Spell checking

Yes

 -