What does this offer that other VLEs such as Blackboard, WebCT or the open source ones Moodle and Dokeos don't?
In fact it seems rather limited by comparison even to Moodle or Dokeos. No discussions or groupwork functionality, or the ability for timed release of content, the tutor has to load their documents as and when they need to, rather than the ability to load it all on at once and time the release of it. Which speaking from experience they much much prefer to do.
The interface needs a bit of a cleanup. Things are fairly consistent but it's not always obvious what you need to do next, and that will cause both students and tutors to avoid using it. It looks nice, but just some navigation hints here and there would be good. Blackboard does it in numbered steps, like 1) Set your title <titlebox> 2) enter your content <content entry box> 3) set the date and time for release etc <time info> 4) save your content.
That sort of thing seems to help.
I was the developer / admin for one of the first Universities in the UK to get the full Blackboard Academic Suite, and we faced a vast load of implementation issues covering everything from bringing lecturers who thought we were trying to take their job away to tears, to Students who didn't know where the on-button was. Not to mention integration issues (where does the student and course info come from? where does the enrolment info come from? how does that information get from where it is into your system?) You really don't want to be entering 10,000 students details manually on enrolment day, especially not when someone else has already done that elsewhere when they signed up. You'll need to speak to your MIS department for info on that.
Sorry to sound harsh but you're entering into a rather competitive niche market and currently theres nothing really to make people use your software over the others. And most importantly, tutors are the most difficult bunch of people you will ever encounter with this sort of thing, so you need to have the usability of the interface perfect otherwise they'll rebel and that's not fun either.
[edit] I've just looked and noticed your university already runs WebCT, if you have access, why not take a look at that and see if that gives you any ideas. [/edit]
