Hard Choices for Individual Situations.

This paper focuses on faculty use of a decision-making process for complex situations. The analysis part of the process describes and compares course management software focusing on: technical specifications, instructional design values,tools and features, ease of use, and standards compliance. The extensive comparisons provide faculty with side-by-side product feature descriptions. The decision-making focus of the paper and of the companion site is on supporting a detailed rational decision process for selecting course management software. This decision process uses a grading style model familiar to educators that compensates for the cognitive illusions and limitations of decision makers to achieve a transparent decision process for selecting the "best" application for each local situation. The current site meets needs for decision-making support, as evidenced by 16,000 visitors a month to the site. By the fall of 2002, there will be similar decision making supports available which will focus on student services, teaching technologies and online education policies. Lists conceptual groupings that have been used to provide targeted views for the learners, learner support, and technical administrator audiences, followed by a checklist of tools or features to include within each of these conceptual categories. Includes a Demonstration model of the Comparative Analysis Decision Table with Three Options.(Contains 17 references.) (Author)