A consortium of local colleges and universities Wednesday announced the purchase of a new online computer system for distance learning.

The new system, called WebCT Vista, will cost the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the Community College of Southern Nevada and Nevada State College combined about $725,000 in one-time fees and a recurring $610,000 a year, said Lori Temple, UNLV vice provost for information and technology. It will be fully implemented next fall.

WebCT Inc., based in Lynnfield Mass., is a computer learning system that students can use for such activities as Internet courses or supplementary instruction.

"UNLV has WebCT, a version called the Campus Edition, which Nevada State and CCSN had too," Temple said. "The software isn't designed for the size of the number of users we have, and what happened is we're going to move to a new version called Vista, WebCT. Vista is designed to be used for large implementation."

The Nevada institutions will save about $454,000 on the deal by sharing equipment, higher education officials said. The current distance learning systems at each school must shut down once a day for maintenance.

For instance, UNLV's system goes down for about 30 minutes at 3 a.m.

The new system is more reliable, and maintenance can be done without shutting the system down, Temple said.

"We've grown so much that the current software and the current hardware can't support reliably the number of students we have. So, at any given time, the system can fail; and if the system fails, then no students can get access to their work and that would be very, very bad."