Darin Eastburn, Robert Baird and Joseph Hinchliffe talked about the migration from WebCT Vista 3 to Vista 4. They highlighted the major differences and key areas of changes and other improvements designed to make managing your course easier than ever.
Darin Eastburn was one of the few professors who had volunteered to transfer his course over to Compass Pilot before it could be deployed campus wide for the Fall 2007 semester. He walked us through his Compass website for Plant Pathology 200. Darin has made extremely good use of all the features and functionality that Vista 4 has to offer. During his talk, he specifically pointed out major differences that may potentially throw professors off track
He has used Compass to make sure that anything covered in lecture or handed out to the students on the first day of class is easily accessible to them at a later point in time. He has also made extensive use of the Compass Learning Modules by posting detailed weekly summaries of what he has covered in class and information contained in handouts, PDFs, and other online class material. By going through these sections one by one, he clearly demonstrated the simplicity of the new Compass.
Robert Baird is also teaching a course in Cinema Studies and is extremely pleased with the functionality that Vista 4 has to offer. He shared his thoughts about the new system and how he has used Vista 4 to manage the course and make it a fun learning experience for students. He specifically focused on the "Who's Online" feature which is really helpful for the students who want to collaborate on homework and assignments.
From their experiences, it's pretty clear that Vista 4 is a step in the right direction for Illinois Compass!