Chapter 2. Evaluate WBT

Advantages disadvantages, and costs of WBT

One of the first major design decisions you confront is whether to use WBT at all. Before you commit to WBT technologies, you should weigh the potential and requirements of WBT to decide whether WBT offers the best solutions for your needs. You should also estimate the costs and make sure you are willing to pay them.

You cannot make the decision based on a mathematical weighing of promised advantages and feared disadvantages. Promised advantages do not pop ready-to-run out of the box. You have to coax and lure them out with good design and hard work. Likewise, the disadvantages that others have experienced are not inevitable. Workarounds and countermeasures can neutralize many of them. As you consider the advantages and disadvantages of WBT, think about how to achieve the advantages while scheming how to avoid the disadvantages.

As you consider this long list of advantages and disadvantages, remember that the only ones that matter are the ones that pertain to your course. If, for example, you do not plan to use collaboration mechanisms, then you get none of their advantages or drawbacks. Always keep your course in mind.

Before beginning to compose something, gauge the nature and extent of the enterprise and work for a suitable design. Design improves even the simplest structure whether of brick and steel or of ...

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