Swiss Virtual Campus to Pilot National e-Learning Platform for Swiss Higher Education Institutions Through WebCT

LYNNFIELD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 3, 2003--

WebCT Vista to Help Switzerland Lead the Way in Online Learning Through the Creation of a Virtual Campus

“To maintain high success and retention rates, it is important to offer students flexible educational opportunities in a way that matches their learning styles”

WebCT, provider of the world's most flexible and widely used higher education e-learning solutions, announced today that the Swiss Virtual Campus (SVC) has chosen WebCT Vista(TM) as the e-learning platform that will be available to all Swiss Higher Education institutions as a pilot for a national platform. Through this e-learning initiative, funded by the Swiss government and aimed at promoting educational success in Switzerland, WebCT Vista will be available to all higher education institutions in the country, providing students with access to high quality education whenever and wherever they choose.

"To maintain high success and retention rates, it is important to offer students flexible educational opportunities in a way that matches their learning styles," said Professor Peter Stucki, President of the Swiss Virtual Campus Steering Committee. "Online learning can help institutions do this by providing students with access to leading ideas, debate and resources through chat rooms with peers, online tutoring and online assessments. This type of e-learning can really enhance students' educational experiences and better prepare them for industry with the increasing requirements for lifelong learning. After reviewing numerous online learning solutions, we found that WebCT Vista is the best choice to support such a wide-scale deployment and would allow us to provide the students in Switzerland with high-quality, flexible learning opportunities."

WebCT Vista is an e-learning platform that includes a broad range of course development and delivery capabilities, content capabilities and information management capabilities. The solution delivers benefits to students, academics and administrators alike - maximizing return on technology investments and optimizing the value of their learning assets.

The Swiss e-learning environment will run on WebCT Vista, managed by SWITCH, the national educational infrastructure and networking service, and will allow the nation's higher education institutions to work together to deliver high quality online exercises, seminars, assessments (self-examination and exams) and support to their students. There will be a large number of courses, with a mix of some newly created courses and some migrated courses from WebCT Campus Edition(TM), currently in use at several Swiss universities. Courses will embrace numerous disciplines including medicine, humanities, technology, sciences, management, mathematics, economics and law. For the science courses, a key element of the online learning environment will be the ability for students to take part in (virtual) practical experiments via the Internet from anywhere in the world, which are usually expensive and time consuming.

"First-class education today is about providing students with high quality and innovative teaching," said Carol Vallone, President and CEO of WebCT. "Online learning can help institutions meet these demands by promoting flexible and creative learning, as a result of stronger collaboration, and the sharing of resource and ideas. The activities of the Swiss Virtual Campus highlight how Switzerland is taking a lead in ensuring it meets changing student learning styles and that it continues to excel in educational excellence."

Vallone added, "The decision by the Swiss Virtual Campus to implement WebCT Vista as its e-learning platform builds on WebCT's work with other consortia across the globe and is consistent with our continued leadership position in the higher education market."

About the Swiss Virtual Campus

The Swiss Virtual Campus is a program of the Swiss Confederation entitled under the 1999 Swiss Federal Law on University Development to support new information and communication technology in higher education. The Swiss Virtual Campus program is part of a process aimed at promoting the information society in Switzerland as well as enabling education - in particular higher education - to take advantage of the opportunities now available through new information and communication technology. In this respect the program hopes to provide students with a virtual mobility that will enable them to play an active role in learning processes and follow high-quality courses on their computer monitors.

About WebCT

WebCT has set the standard for e-learning systems in higher education. Based in Lynnfield, Mass., WebCT provides a highly flexible e-learning environment that empowers institutions across the educational spectrum with the ability to achieve their unique objectives. Thousands of colleges and universities around the world - from community colleges to large university consortia - are using WebCT to expand the boundaries of teaching and learning. For more information, please visit www.webct.com.