In the summer of 2004, Joe Moxley and I were exploring ways to integrate a content management system (CMS) into the University of South Florida's first-year writing program. After exploring and ultimately rejecting Blackboard, the content management system already supported by USF, we decided to try Microsoft's Sharepoint Team Services, a proprietary content manage system. We chose Sharepoint primarily because we wanted a product that was fully compatible with Microsoft Office applications like Word and PowerPoint and Microsoft's server package, all of which were already funded and supported by the university. Sharepoint turned out to be an easy and effective way for our teachers to collaboratively build course materials like syllabi and project assignments and for students to build e-portfolios, all using the tools they were already familiar with, like Word for word processing and PowerPoint to create or view classroom presentations. Class homepages could be assembled by dragging and dropping windows. Sharepoint also drastically simplified the peer review process and allowed us to create an archive of student work. In short, we've found Sharepoint to be an elegant solution to the rather complicated problem of administering a large and diverse writing program.
