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Questia Media, Inc. Forms Strategic Alliance with WebCT to
Bring Scholarly Content to Students
Alliance Will Provide 6.8 Million WebCT Users Direct Access to Questia's Service Featuring More Than 50,000 Books and Journals
HOUSTON (September 6, 2000) Questia Media, Inc. today announced its strategic alliance with WebCT, the leading provider of Web-based courseware and services to over 6.8 million students at over 1,400 colleges and universities worldwide. The affiliation provides WebCT users with direct access to the first-of-its-kind Questia online research service. At launch in January 2001, the Questia service will provide its subscriber base of undergraduates with unlimited access to the full text of 50,000 liberal arts books and journals and a suite of research and writing tools designed to help students research and compose better papers faster and easier.Whereas searching Questia's entire scholarly collection is free, a subscription fee is necessary for access to the full texts and writing tools.
“Both Questia and WebCT have complementary goals to provide educators and students with access to quality information and services that enrich their online learning experience,” said Troy Williams, founder and CEO of Questia Media, Inc. “WebCT enables students to realize a better learning experience through their comprehensive communication, collaboration, and learning tools. Questia will enhance that experience by giving them access to tens of thousands of scholarly books and journals, all of which have their footnotes and bibliographies hyperlinked for easy and seamless cross-reference. Questia's scholarly content is combined with tools that facilitate research and paper writing such as the automatic footnote and bibliography generator, highlighter, dictionary, encyclopedia, and personalization tools.”
In addition to students, the venture also benefits professors and other university and college teaching staff. WebCT, as the leading Web-based course management system, currently offers professors the ability to more efficiently disseminate syllabi, lecture notes, required or suggested reading and other media content. The service also provides access to online communities to encourage peer-to-peer discussion and information sharing. With the addition of Questia on WebCT, professors will benefit from the service when utilizing the enhanced research tools to write their white papers. Additionally, Questia provides a conduit for instructors to easily check the references cited in papers submitted by their students.
“We were attracted to Questia because they offer superior, academic content not currently found online,” said Carol Vallone, president and CEO of WebCT. “We believe that Questia will become an invaluable resource for students in all academic settings. Convenient access to Questia's service enables WebCT to provide our customers with a complete package to meet their research needs.”
“As the e-education trend continues to gain momentum, Questia is poised to provide an integral platform for the education market,” said Troy Williams, CEO and founder of Questia. “Research is a critical element in any higher education curriculum, and today, a student's ability to effectively conduct online research is limited by the lack of credible, high quality resources available. At Questia, we plan to transform the way research is done by providing access to a comprehensive collection of previously published, academic books and journals.”
About Questia
Founded in 1998, Questia Media, Inc. is building the first online service to provide unlimited access to the full text of hundreds of thousands of books and journals, as well as tools to easily use this information. For millions of college students and researchers, the QuestiaSM service will enable them to efficiently research and compose papers at any time, from every connected corner of the world. Based in Houston with over 240 employees, Questia is delivering on the true promise of the Internet by providing access to a wealth of human knowledge. Information can be found at www.questia.com.
About WebCT
WebCT is the leading provider of Web-based course tools, community, content, and commerce to the higher education marketplace. Today, more than 48,000 faculty are using WebCT to teach courses with over 6.8 million student accounts at 1,484 colleges and universities in 57 countries. The company's robust e-learning environment integrates WebCT, the most popular course management system in the world, the Math Forum, the leading math community on the Internet, and WebCT.com, the first destination site to offer both teaching and learning resources to a community of peers across discipline and institutional boundaries. WebCT also has a strategic alliance with SCT and Campus Pipeline to provide a unified end-to-end system that delivers a full range of online learning resources, administrative services, and campus intranet offerings from a single logon.
Media:
Richards/Gravelle Public Relations
Stacie Barnett (214) 891-2910
stacie_barnett@richards.com
