The 18 full-timers are programmers, systems analysts and level-two support personnel. Approximately 35,000 students and faculty who currently use WebTycho access level-one support by a toll-free 800 number, or in real-time chat, or asynchronously by e-mail. WebTycho users can also search and query a large online help-function, knowledge-base that is inter-linked with the application itself.

"WebTycho is very intuitive," says Sapp. "The majority of questions that we get [classified as level one] are when someone has the wrong password or when someone has a question about how to turn a feature off that they may not be allowed to turn off." More than 97 percent of the questions that the call center answers are level-one questions. The remaining small percentage of technical support issues, classified as level two, are solved by a level-two support person, who may, under special circumstances, be required to collaborate with a WebTycho developer.

Sapp claims that, for several reasons, WebTycho is "a big competitive advantage for the university." In particular, he explains how each semester his department administers a qualitative and quantitative survey in which WebTycho users can make comments and provide ratings on the functions of the software. The survey becomes the basis for the next version of WebTycho.

"We look at all the quantitative data, and we read every comment," says Sapp. "A WebTycho operations committee, made up of representatives from all over the university, determines what the priorities are for the next version of WebTycho. For example, we’ll get feedback in the Fall, develop in the Spring, and then make the new version available for the Summer semester."

With an online environment that grows so quickly, UMUC must deal with the implications of scalability to continuously support its burgeoning use of technology on many levels. "We do a lot of data analysis on not just how many students we are adding, but also on the nature of their usage," says Sapp. WebTycho users are becoming more demanding of UMUC electronic resources and services, which means more demand is obviously placed on the institution’s technical architecture. "We do watch this carefully and we do stay ahead of the curve," Sapp adds.

Currently UMUC has three server locations, one at its main campus in Maryland and two smaller server sets in Europe and Asia. There is a cluster of ten server machines located at the main campus, with two larger servers recently added to the cluster "that will allow us to handle another growth spurt without any affect on the students." Additionally, the Learning Application, Development and Support Department is in process of creating what Sapp calls "a business continuity architecture that will split these servers into two different areas to provide greater redundancy and greater fault tolerance."

Educational Pathways asked Sapp what he thinks other institutions should understand about the implementation of an effective course/learning management system. Here’s his reply:

"I think the big thing is don’t settle for less. Whether you are going to build it yourself, or have someone build it for you, or whether you are selecting something that is already built, be very exacting. The culture in our institutions is not to find a tool and then learn how to use it. It is to build your instructional technologies specifically to the way you want them used and expect to change them constantly. The metaphor I always use is what would be the face-to-face difference?

"WebTycho is the university. Would you want to go to a university that had nothing but kwanset huts that look like every other university? No! You would want to go to a university where faculty members could create classrooms reflective of the way they teach."