Thursday, April 20, 2000

Challenging Commercial Vendors, George Washington U. Enters Courseware Market By SARAH CARR Three and a half years ago, administrators at George Washington University were looking for a quick and easy way to help faculty members get online, either by teaching Web-based distance-education courses or by introducing online components to traditional courses. Technicians at the university decided to create a courseware system, which was eventually named "Prometheus," for the Greek god who provided fire to man. It has not only prompted many faculty members at the university to get online, but may also become a significant source of revenue for the university, which is now trying to sell the system to other institutions. Approximately 1,000 George Washington faculty members are using Prometheus this semester. At Vanderbilt University, where faculty members have been beta-testing the product for the past few months, administrators recently signed a deal to license the courseware. Bo Davis, the lead developer on the Prometheus team, says he is currently in discussions with more universities that are interested in licensing the courseware -- putting George Washington in competition with private companies offering similar products, such as Blackboard and WebCT. Professors at George Washington and Vanderbilt use Prometheus to let students in traditional courses have discussions, post lecture notes, and make presentations online. G.W.U. also uses Prometheus as the platform for its online distance-education courses. Mr. Davis says university administrators created their own courseware so they would have more control over it. "The idea that someone else would control the online classroom that we planned to use was something the university was very concerned about," he says. He adds that Prometheus has helped some professors at George Washington embrace distance education more quickly than they might have had the courseware been more foreign. "When we rolled out Prometheus and got 900 people to use it, the migration to distance education was made more easy because the teachers were comfortable with the platform," he says. "They don't have to learn how to work in a new environment. This is how distance education is going to need to work." Bill Longwell, the director of the microcomputer laboratories in the College of Arts and Sciences at Vanderbilt, says his university decided to license Prometheus because it is easy to use and modify and because most of the faculty members who have tried it are happy with it. However, Mr. Longwell says Vanderbilt may still license other courseware systems as well. "I am a big believer in autonomy and letting 1,000 flowers bloom," he says. "But most of our faculty have been enthusiastic about Prometheus. I would even say there has been a groundswell of support because you don't flog people to get them to use this." Mr. Longwell says Prometheus, like most systems, has glitches. For example, he says some professors have complained that the grading feature needs work and that the chat software could be improved. "There is a litany of things that we have reported, but the working relationship with George Washington University has been quite good," he says. Mr. Davis says he did not originally intend to market Prometheus to other universities. And even if the bid for customers fails this semester, university administrators plan to continue developing the product. Says Joe Moravec, the senior adviser for business development at G.W.U.: "Whether other universities license it from us or not, and whether it proves to be a viable commercial venture or not, we are still committed to it for our own needs." Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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