Murray Goldberg developed WebCT

WebCT grew out of UBC research which began in 1995 when Murray Goldberg received a TLEF grant to study the effectiveness of web-based learning. The study showed that web-based learning was roughly equal in effectiveness to lecture-based learning, and that the combination of lecture and web outperformed either web or lecture-based alone. The process of building that first course was time consuming, expensive, and required some technical expertise. Therefore, when a second grant was received the following year Murray and his team built some tools which they later called WebCT to help efficiently build more courses for further experimentation. Murray began giving away WebCT and soon had roughly 100 universities using the software. In 1997, with the help of UBC's UILO, Murray stated a company to sell and support the software. WebCT was the first successful LMS for higher education and at its height, WebCT employed 350 people and served 14 million students annually in 80 countries at 4,000 universities. In 2006 WebCT was sold to a competitor, Blackboard.