History of Virtual Learning Environments in The 1990s - 1990s - 1994

1994

• In 1994, NKI Distance Education in Norway starts its second generation, online, distance education courses. The courses were provided on the Internet through EKKO, NKI's self-developed Learning Management System (LMS). The experiences are described in the article NKI Fjernundervisning: Two Decades of Online Sustainability in Morten Flate Paulsen's book Online Education and Learning Management Systems which is available online at http://www.studymentor.com
• CALCampus launches online-based school through which administration, real-time classroom instruction, and materials are provided. Origins of CALCampus
• The Tarrson Family Endowed Chair in Periodontics at UCLA is establish with a testamentary gift to design, develop and launch the UCLA Periodontics Information Center for sharing periodontal practices and concepts with the worldwide dental community via CD-ROM and the Internet.
• Lotus Development Corporation acquires the Human Interest Group. The system evolves into the Lotus Learning Management System and Lotus Virtual Classroom now owned by IBM. Links to articles that describes how IBM has previously implemented the "inventions" described in the Blackboard patent.
• SUNY Learning Network begins in 1994. Traditional faculty were hired to create online courses for asynchronous delivery into the home via computer. Each faculty member worked with an instructional design partner to implement the course. From the fall of 1995 through spring of 1997, forty courses were developed and delivered. SLN now supports over 3,000 faculty, 100,000 enrollments on 40 of the State University of New York's campuses.
• WEST 1.0 is released by WBT Systems. It eventually is renamed TopClass.
• Bob Jensen and Petrea Sandlin publish "Electronic Teaching and Learning: Trends in Adapting to Hypertext, Hypermedia, and Networks in Higher Education" - republished 1997. Text available via hyperlink, including identification of ten leading LMS systems in 1994 (discussed in detail in chapter 3 of their book):
  • Quest from Allen Communication
  • Tourguide from American Training International (Tourguide is no longer listed as a product at Infotec.)
  • Multimedia ToolBook from Asymetrix Corporation, bought by Click2Learn, bought by SumTotal Systems
  • Lesson Builder from the Center for Education Technology in Accounting (this product never was completed)
  • Tencore from Computer Teaching Corporation
  • Course Builder from Discovery Systems International, Inc.
  • Training Icon Environment (TIE) from Global Information Systems Technology, Inc.
  • tbtAuthor from HyperGraphics Corporation (HyperGraphics no longer lists tbtAuthor in its product line)
  • Authorware from Macromedia Corporation
  • Personal Education Authoring Kit (PEAK) from Major Educational Resources Corp. PEAK is for Mac users only and has been discontinued. However, while they last you can get free copies at 800-989-5353
• Banking on the tremendous commercial success and rapid growth for the UOP program, Reda Athanasios of Convene International starts making the online virtual classroom suite, built in collaboration with UOP, available for all other schools aiming at success for their distance education programs.
• The JANUS project led by the Open University releases in September 1994 Deliverable 45 describing the interim evaluations of the first three online courses delivered across Europe in conjunction with the JANUS project, including AD280 "What is Europe", DM863 "Lisp Programming" and D309 "Cognitive Psychology" Virtual Summer School. Later in the year the Open University releases a longer final report purely on the Virtual Summer School.
• September 1994: The JANUS User Association holds its first AGM and conference at the Dutch Open University. It is one of the first Europe-wide associations focussed on e-learning. It later changed its name to LearnTel and continued until 1999. An online archive of the newsletter is still available via the support of pjb Associates.
• Athabasca University (Canada) implements first on-line Executive MBA program using Lotus Notes.
• TeleEducation NB introduces a DOS-based working LMS in 1993. In 1994 a more powerful system was proposed for the WWW. A description of the concept was published in 1995 with some of the principal features of an LMS. Reference: McGreal, R. (1995). A heterogeneous distributed database system for distance education networks. The American Journal of Distance Education, 9(1), 27-43. Retrieved 11 August 2006
• Taking advantage of Convene International's online virtual classroom and hoping for similar success to that of UOP online, several schools start working with Convene in wiring their Distance Education programs and offering it online via the Internet.
• Mark Lavenant and John Kruper present "The Phoenix Project at the University of Chicago: Developing a Secure, Distributed Hypermedia Authoring Environment Built on the World Wide Web" at the First International World-Wide Web Conference in Geneva, Switzerland. "The Phoenix Project" later became the Web-based learning environment within the Division of the Biological Sciences at the University of Chicago.
• Swanton High School in Ohio used learning management systems to track student progress, as well as testing results, satellite courses, videodiscs, Hypercard, QuickTime video, and Internet connections.
• Intralearn comes out with a Learning Management System for the Mid Market. This system has the facility to conduct courses to students from different locations using internet, interact with them, send them mails and conduct examinations.
• Tufts University released(1994) the Health Sciences Database which subsequently (2003) became known as TUSK, Tufts university sciences knowledgebase. In 1997 using MYSQL created version 3 - hsdb3. There has been a steady development of features through versions hsdb4, hsdb45, TUSK 1.0 and now TUSK 2.0. From its inception its basis was integration of clinical information with its ubiquitous availability across space and time. Students and authors had specific permissions within the system. TUSK is a combination learning management system, content/knowledge management system and course management system. The system is used at the three health sciences schools at Tufts and now a 7 partner schools in the U.S., Africa and India.
• July 1994: First international gathering of educators using online technologies to conduct classroom project-based learning was held by iEARN (International Education and Resource Network) in Puerto Madryn, Argentina. 120 educators from 20 countries gathered to share experiences. Out of this conference came the first international iEARN constitution and plans to expand school networking globally.