»» BSCW at the University of Helsinki
»» BSCW pikaohjeet & tukipyyntölomake
One of the older e-learning services still running at this university is the web-based workgroup collaboration environment BSCW. It features quite spartan looks and is based on setting up a working area consisting of folders and files that users can be invited to work on with different roles. The simplicity of setting up a working area combined with powerful access right management and easy forming of collaborative groups has been a key factor to the widespread use of BSCW at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine.
Many courses use BSCW to distribute the course materials to target groups, and different groups of teachers & students have been formed so that everyone can access the materials that are relevant to them. A new teacher can then simply be added to a group, and gain access to many courses with just one invitation (in Moodle you need to enroll separately for each course, for example). Discussion forum functionality also makes it possible to do educative assignments in BSCW (like peer commenting) that you would normally use Moodle for.
The future for BSCW doesn’t look too good, however, as it isn’t going to be updated so it is recommended that teachers start learning to use Moodle for their courses from 2010 and onwards.
»» An example BSCW folder (open, anonymous access)