Western Faculty of Education eCampus to WebCT OWL Migration
Over the next coming months, the Faculty of Education will be readying a new platform for online education delivery. We will be migrating to the Western WebCT OWL environment which has been established for many years.
We have enjoyed the flexibility and functionality that our current online environment eCampus has provided for us for the past six years. The platform has proven to be robust, reliable and innovative. But it is time for us to examine how best to serve our students, instructors and the ability to leverage best practices in premium products.
There are many reasons why this change is necessary, but the two most important are as follows. First, the functional aspects of WebCT OWL have surpassed what we are able to do in eCampus and it is a costly exercise to continually update and innovate a system as complex as ours, and second, because the Western supported platform is WebCT OWL, we at the Faculty of Education are able to leverage the main campus support model and best practices. For all students that come from the Western undergraduate program the transition will be very smooth, for our other students the learning curve will be similar to what they experience already. We will also gain the flexibility of support hours, common platform and proven toolsets that WebCT OWL provides for us through Western ITS.
This is an exciting time for us at the Faculty and we believe that this platform will allow all
of us to maintain our reputation as providers of the best student experience.