[Zope] Zope in academic/educational/scientific environments (important)

[Paul Browning]

--On 06 April 2001 20:23 +0200 Henny van der Linde <linde@inline-info.nl> 
wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
> We (a smal group) have build a quite comprehensive (but still far from
> perfect in our opinion) Zope based system  in wich teachers can offer
> websupport with their courses. It's a sort of content management system
> for teachers. Students can also deliver content. There are groupware
> fascilites and more. This is all realized in a rather large social
> sciences faculty within a dutch university. We have a relative large,
> happy, userbase but.......
>
> It has been quite a struggle. Not the development sec but 'selling' Zope
> as a platform and facing competitors in the ,so called weblearning world.
> Now we're facing a battle with Blackboard (I'm just recovering from an
> attack by some idiots who want to rebuild the whole thing with PHP, Dutch
> universities: never a dull moment.....).

Henny:

I know the feeling. Blackboard, WebCT, etc come in nice boxes with
manuals and are supeficially very attractive to many. But I, like
you I guess, worry about these environments being a straitjacket in
the not-so-long term.

>
> What realy would help us (in defending our system and Zope) is a list
> universities, schools etc. who are using Zope for
> educational/scientific/content management purposes. I'm
> monitoring/contributing  to (not as much as some of you I'm afraid)  this
> list and I noticed that quite some activity on the Zope front is
> happening in academic/scientefic/educational environments but I never
> kept any taps.

I had a go making a list for UK HE back in February:

http://www.bris.ac.uk/ISC/zope/gamut/sld017.htm

Bristol can now be added to this list. In fact we're about to
embark on a feasibility study which will include a comparative
assessment of how easy (or otherwise) it is to integrate
Blackboard vs. a Zope-built VMLE with our corporate
information systems.

The membership roster at
http://www.fmcc.org.uk/mailman/roster/zope

will perhaps also give a feel about who in the UK HE is thinking
about dipping a toe into the Zope water.

>
> So if you are using Zope in this sort of environment please let me know.
> You can mail me direct: linde@fsw.leidenuniv.nl. If I have a list I put
> it on Zope.org so that other people can use to defend their (potential)
> Zope efforts to decisionmakers, a sort of academic/educational showcase.

I hope you also get a response from mainland European colleagues. I'm
aware of a number of people doing interesting stuff in this area and
regret not yet being a more active participant.

Good luck.

Paul

--
 The Library, Tyndall Avenue, Univ. of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1TJ, UK
     E-mail: paul.browning@bristol.ac.uk  URL: http://www.bris.ac.uk/