This is in response to the post in the Announce It forum area about the DNN Coursebook Module.
http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Community/Forums/tabid/795/mid/2108/forumid/112/threadid/135835/scope/posts/Default.aspx
I wanted to post about it here (instead of on Mitchel's site) because I feel this is an area that is vastly untapped in the DNN community, and this area would get a much wider reading.
First of all I want to say that I really like the program, it seems simple, straightforward, perfect for schools. However, we cannot use it here and I had to uninstall it. The reason I had to uninstall it didn't have anything to do with the program itself, but the fact that we have a huge, very expensive, program already doing that job, and it is an integrated part of our student database. So, if I made that module available to teachers, they'd start using that instead of the one they are "supposed" to be using. *grin* However, I am excited about the prospects of this program being released!
Anyways, this post isn't about that particular program, it is about the market that program is geared towards. In the educational field, there are basically two players right now, Blackboard (www.blackboard.com) and Moodle (www.moodle.org). There are a few others, but they are very few and very far between. Blackboard is by far the Microsoft of that industry, they have been buying out competitors left and right and now have a huge monopoly. They now have many-many patents out there for online course techniques, and because of that almost all of the commercial competitors have been either bought out or have quietly disappeared from view.
To their credit, Blackboard is a really nice program. It runs extremely well, has a well laid-out interface, and has all the features you could ever want for online course instruction. However, because they have the monopoly on this, they also feel that they can charge whatever they want for the service. I won't go into how much charge, but suffice it to say that we'd have to lay off at least three people to afford it here... So, that puts it out of the reach of many schools that would otherwise use their product.
Their only main competitor right now is Moodle, and that is mostly because it is open-source. However, Moodle is written entirely in PHP, making it a nightmare to implement in a Windows environment. But, because of the outrageous cost of Blackboard, people are flocking to it in increasing numbers anways. This is also due partly to a new state law in Michigan requiring online course instruction as part of the cirriculum, and several mandated programs that "only" work with Blackboard or Moodle (for now). Moodle, however, is like a lot of other open-source project I've seen in the *nix community. It is awkard to use, prone to errors, and has the appearance of a website from the late 1990s. That makes it even more unattractive than running PHP under Windows...
I have been talking about this topic with quite a few others in this field, and have gotten the impression that they'd be more than willing to move away from Moodle and Blackboard if there was a suitable replacement that would run under IIS. There is definitely a need (the state is mandating that) and a desire, now we just need a product. DNN could fill this void! Right now I have a few courses setup on our website using DNN, but they only fill about 80% of the functionality that Blackboard or Moodle offer. The biggest hitch in using DNN is that you cannot take quizzes and compile grades (automatically). Several of the available courses I've seen are already being distributed in two formats, either Blackboard or Moodle, but we cannot take advantage of them.
So, I want to put this out as a plea for all developers... Please develop more modules for DNN that are comparable/compatible with Moodle! The DNN Coursebook is an excellent start, and I have the feeling that if more was available we'd see a large migration of school districts to DNN!
Discussion?