How to use this site

There are several ways to proceed through the site. Most users return several times in order to work through this process. There are three options:

• Product Information

• Compare Products

• Make a Decision

Product Information

Product List

This section allows you to select a product and view a full list of the product's features and their descriptions. If this is your first visit to EduTools, you may select a product to see how it is displayed.

Compare Products

This section allows for four distinct approaches to comparing products:

• By Product Name
  If you know which products you would like to compare, you can select this option, and select the products you would like to compare. This view will show each product you select and list all the features and feature descriptions in a side-by-side view.

• By Features
  If you do not have a clear set of products in mind, but you have some ideas about features you want, this is a good starting point for you. This option allows you to review and consider all of the available product features. You can first review all the features. Then, you are able to select a set of features that you want in your product, and this page will display the products with those features.

• By Preselected Group
  This option is helpful for users who are new to the product and feature selection process. Products have been grouped by either certain features they have or have been identified as useful for certain audiences.

• Compare products by developer
  This option gives you a list of products by developers.

Make a Decision

Summative Decision Tool

The EduTools Decision Engine is most useful if you are already familiar with the products and features you wish to compare.

The goal of the decision tool is to give the user a rational decision making process to assist in selecting a course management system.

The goal of this portion of the site is to:

• Limit focus to what is required
• Consider only a very few things at a time when making ratings/rankings of suitability
• Make the computer keep track of the data and do the arithmetic calculations for the familiar weighted grading model for scores
• Provide for sensitivity analysis (tweaking and recalculating)

Step 1: Select Products

On this page, you want to select the products you have already reviewed. The goal of this step is to identify those products that you want to include in a decision making grid. After you have selected the products you wish to include, click 'next'

Step 2: Custom Products

On this page, you can add additional products to your decision that may not be currently reviewed on this site. You can skip this part and go to the next step. Some users add an additional product that represents the current system or the status quo for purposes of making the comparison include the complete set of options available.

Step 3: Choose Features

On this page, you want to select the features you have already reviewed and determined to be important for the product you select. The goal of this step is to identify those features that you want to include in a decision making grid. After you have selected the features you wish to include, click 'next'

Step 4: Custom Criteria

On this page, you can add custom criteria to your decision that may be unique to your institution or situation. You can skip this part and go to the next step. Some users add additional feature criteria so that the decision criteria matches a Request for Proposal (RFP) process that is being used.

Step 5: Apply weights

On this page, you want to determine how important each feature is in the overall decision. There is no pre-set scale. If one feature is 10 times as important as another, you can insert numbers to represent their relative importance to the decision.

Step 6: Assign scores

On this page, you can score the suitability of features found in each product. For example, if you reviewed the whiteboard feature in three products, and you particularly liked one product's whiteboard over the others, you can assign a higher suitability score here. You can also view a limited comparison of the products on the features you selected which will open a new browser window.

Decision Results

On this page, you see the results of the weights and scores for each product based on the features you have selected. You are able to adjust the weights and scores, and you can view a limited comparison of the products on the features you selected which will open a new browser window. This page will provide a visual display of your results.