This article on Inside Higher Ed examines some of the problems this acquisition makes: specifically, what does this mean for Blackboard competitors that are licensing either products? Considering Blackboard’s history of suing competitors that they think are encroaching on their territory – I am guessing that doesn’t mean very good things.  Blackboard is saying that they want to sustain those relationships – but who really believes that? No one that has kept up with Blackboard’s dismal record on doing that with past assimilations.

Even worse is Blackboard’s ability to integrate purchased products into their existing software.  Blackboard 9.1 is mess of mish-mashed concepts held together with a rather questionable string of logic.  Even their own trainers make fun of how little sense many things make in the control panel.

And this has all been mostly with integrating one LMS with another. Elluminate and Wimba are entirely different categories of tools than what they have been dealing with so far. How big of a mess is that going to be?

At one time I though monopolies were illegal in this country. Guess I just dreamed that chapter of poli-sci.  Even if legal, they are still bad ideas and even worse for a field like educational technology that needs innovation right now rather than one company that controls everything.

It is like the ancient educators created different tools to accomplish different aspects of learning, but in the secret Sauron created one master ring to eventually enslave them all:

One LMS to rule them all,
One LMS to find them,
One LMS to buy them all
and in the ‘borg bind them.

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Of course, there are those that see something ominous brewing in this decision, while others are just down right concerned.  Count me in the concerned camp.  Can we really move on, when we have no idea why we are moving on?  I am sure there are always a few lemmings that question where the group is heading, only to be shushed by the others. “Just be quiet and be glad we are getting such a great view of the scenery off of this…..”

I could be happier about this if I actually knew why it was over (even if I didn’t agree with the reasons). Did Desire2Learn just run out of funding for further action? Did Blackboard realize they were losing the battle and decide to get out before the P.R. nightmare got worse? Did Blackboard finally get a clue and realize their patent was bogus? Or maybe even realize what they were doing was hurting the educational community more than helping, and decide to do the right thing?

(had to pause for a second…. tough to ROTFL and type at the same time…)

But as many have pointed out, this settlement is probably going to be worse than any possible final outcome of the original legal action. Is Blackboard going to sue others now? Are they going to file more patents and claim to invent stuff that they really didn’t?  We have no idea.  What if you want to start a new company, with a fresh idea? Will you find yourself in the cross hairs of a massive legal team, just because you used an obvious idea that they claimed to have invented? If we don’t know why this process was stopped, we can’t even possibly know where to move forward. Too many land mines hidden out there now.

Anyways…. The biggest problem is that we see a clear example of Blackboard breaking a vow. They vowed to appeal this to the Supreme Court and then didn’t.  What does that say about their vows to not hit open-source companies like Moodle and Sakai with lawsuits? Better start watching your back some more, Martin Dougiamas!

Of course, Desire2Learn valso broke a vow: to fight this to the end. I guess it is just the Blackboard Effect. Heck, they even got the CEO of the once-rebellious Angel LMS to turn into a boring corporate suck-up, so I guess they can turn Desire2Learn into complacent zombies.  Who will probably get bought soon.  Blackborg indeed.

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DHdUkkiIWE

Jim has some great ideas for what you can do with blogs in education.  The basic ideas can be found here:

http://blog.uta.edu/~jgroom/presentation/

Also, you can see how they actually use these ideas at UMWBlogs.org.

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Are we ever gonna see change here?  Two exhibits to consider:

1. Five Companies Google Might Buy Next

   Blackboard is listed as one of those companies (thanks Katrina for the link!).  That is probably not going to happen, but I find the Wall Street Journal’s description of the Borg particularly interesting: “Once a school begins using Blackboard software for their students there are high switching costs as class guides, exams, results, etc are all stored within the blackboard system.”  Wow – if a non-educational company only writes one paragraph about your company, and they choose to highlight one of your worst features… you gotta realize that maybe your business model has drifted too much over to the dark side.

2. Mark Smithers posted an interesting list of various LMS Evaluations he found.  I haven’t read through every report on the list exhaustively, but I did notice some trends.  In all but one case where Moodle was evaluated against Blackboard, Moodle won.  In any case where there wasn’t Moodle but there were other platforms, Blackboard won.

So, the natives are getting restless, and people are noticing…. but is it enough?  Should we be happy that our institutional money (and by extension, our tax money when an institution is a state college) is going to a lawsuit happy near-monopoly?  What would it take to get Blackboard’s attention?  The Wall Street Journal article shows that everyone is starting to notice the questionable practices of Blackboard.  Mark Smither’s list might possibly indicate that there is another LMS option that is winning evaluations, but most of the other options out there still don’t seem to be gaining ground.  Do we need to get more people to realize that Blackboard is hurting education in general, or do we need to get Blackboard to realize that they need to change course?  Or is this just the immovable object meeting the irresistible force?

Personally, I just want to call for Blackboard to  give it a rest and move on.

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What a second.. far from over?  Sadly so, that is probably the case.

(pause for pathetic sigh)

Blackboard is so far vowing to press on.  Which should be really shocking: this whole case has generated a ton of negative press for the ‘borg.  I say ” should” be shocking, but defiance has become the common reaction from Blackboard. Normally I would quote some weird statement by some senior officer at Blackboard about now, mock them for how they think we are stupid, and then end with a cutsey Blackboardwalla video.

But that’s been done a million times here, and I have grown tired of Blackboard’s insistance that they have any intellectual property disagreement with Desire2Learn.  Or anyone for that matter.

Maybe resistance really is futile.  If you try to run to a competitor, the ‘borg will end up assimilating them someday.

But, really… how long can a poorly run business stay afloat in this economy?  Much wiser companies than Blackboard have vanished overnight because of their minor missteps.  Bb is making massive mistakes and has still managed to hang on.  Might be something to consider if you are thinking of sinking any more money into any form of the Bb LMS.

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• a menu of tools
• adaptability / accessibility
• interactive virtual agents
• ease of collaboration
• seamless integration
• tactile activities for any sense (smell, touch, taste, etc)
• modular learning (customizable)
• holodeck
• capture, evaluate, and weigh user created content
• useful
• game based interaction with in game assessment
• simulation
• translate into different languages, including American Sign Language

As you can see, quite a diverse list… even some crazy ideas.  I like crazy ideas.  This was at our presentation on New Vision for Learning Management Systems.  Interesting how people that had come from all over the country came up with many of the concepts we are trying to capture with New Vision.  Coincidence?

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Interesting concept.  You retain all rights and controls over everything you want to share, because it is served up from your computer.  What a crazy thought.

So, what if the browser itself becomes the LMS?  What if the instructor created a bunch of activities that students worked on and then shared back with the class through something like Opera Unite?  The technical details would be crazy to make it work right, but think if it could get to work right?  You would have to authenticate all students and instructors through an official school database, of course.

But this could take our New Vision for Online Learning in a whole new direction.  Just some crazy thoughts.

Also think of combining this idea with Google Wave?

My head hurts from the possibilities….

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FireFox plug-ins are pretty nifty little deals.  And many of them have educational uses.  A few more are even totally educational in nature.  But I wonder if LMS programmers will ever get into the business of making plug-ins that will enhance their products?  Have some done that already and I just missed it?

Yeah, I know that would force people to use a specific browser.  But just imagine if the concept of plug-in goes universal and all browsers end up being able to use the same plug-ins interchangeably for a moment….

Because I am thinking we are really going to need this – like yesterday.  I checked around for a plagiarism checker – one like “Map This“, where you just highlight some text and click “check for plagiarism” – and couldn’t find one.  I found a couple of dead links to some here and there, so maybe it is out there and just hard to find.

Because, let’s face it – going EduPunk or GoogleWave or what not with your class would mean that you might not be able to check that cool blog post against your plagiarism software.  Or maybe you can.  But wouldn’t it be nice to to integrate it with your browser instead?

Or what about designing your LMS to work with existing plug-ins like Zotero?

There are probably a hundred different ways to create plug-ins specifically for online courses.  Is there someone out there doing this, and I just haven’t searched enough?

Random thought that hit me today…

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Colleges Consider Using Blogs Instead of Blackboard

It has a fairly balanced look at both sides of the issue. The last paragraph proves my point that I have made over and over again about Blackboard: the people in charge just don’t know what they are talking about.  Here is the direct quote:

Blackboard is trying to keep up.

Michael L. Chasen, the company’s chief executive, has told The Chronicle that the latest version of the software integrates some Web 2.0 tools and still offers plenty of features that blogging packages can’t match, like online gradebooks.

Good point.  Except, of course, for the fact that WordPress has a grade book plug-in (well, two actually). And some really cool social networking plug-ins, too.

My question has always been – why do you need an LMS or program of any kind?  Why limit your students to just a blog or a LMS?  Why not create a simple platform that aggregates whatever tool they use into one spot for easy of collaboration accross tools?  That has been the question we have been asking with our New Vision for Learning Management Systems idea, that will hopefully morph into an open source project soon.

UPDATE:

I forgot to also respond to this legitimate concern raised in the article:

Some professors asked whether it was possible to run a blog that only students could see, noting that they had concerns about making course activities public.

The short answer is, in WordPress and a few others, yes.  The University I work for installed WordPress MU for anyone (student or teacher) to use.  They were easily able to connect it to our university system – you log in with the same ID/password you use for email, and your blog is automatically set-up. Custom blogs for, say, groups or departments can also be created.  There are also a few instructors that keep it private for only their classes.  Our IT department was able to connect specific blogs to specific class rolls.  But even if you can’t do that, there are plug-ins that let you authenticate with users you want and then only authenticated users can see the blog.

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“We’re taking a beating over this lawsuit. What can we do to improve our image?”

“We need to do something that people like. And, Bob – no more stealing Start Trek jargon to name our new software versions, okay?”

“sighhh….. but NG sounded so futuristic and cool!”

“Maybe in the 90s! But focus – we need to do something good for our image.”

“I heard the other day that people like angels. Maybe that should be the new name for our next software version.”

“I like it! People want to make us out to be devils, let’s force them into calling us angels!”

“Oh, wait… I think we have a competitor named that already.”

“Even better! We can just buy them and get their image without doing any work! Just like we did with WebCT!”

I was really shocked when Katrina told me the news. Yes, she is still active in the Ed Tech world – even though we rarely hear from her here. She did recruit Shaun after all… so she is helping in some ways :)

But I just can’t see the logic behind this purchase, even from a twisted business CEO pointy-haired boss perspective.  From what I have read, a huge chunk of the people using Angel chose Angel because they were fed up with Blackboard.  Why do you want to acquire such a huge population of users that have proven that they will change software when disgruntled… and they were with the company you bought because they hated yours in the first place? Not to mention the fact that Blackboard is saying that eventually the two products will merge.  How? They are so vastly different.  That just doesn’t seem possible.

And let’s not forget how bad they botched the WebCT purchase.  Oh, wait… they are saying they learned a lot from that and will do better.  But… wait… WebCT wasn’t their first purchase. Prometheus anyone? If they didn’t learn enough from that one to help with WebCT, don’t count on them having learned enough from WebCT to make the Angel acquisition any less painful.

I just can’t help but thinking of Dilbert whenever I read anything from Michael Chasen of Blackboard.  I love how he pointed out that there is more competition now in the LMS market than there ever was… because new ones are starting every year.  Yep, there is a greater number of competitors, so that means greater competition, right? Nope – that means nothing for competition when those new options are just competing for the same small slice of customers that won’t go with the bigger options.  Percentage-wise, this purchase essential creates a monopoly.  One can only hope this will not be approved by the FTC.  But, then again, they should have never approved of the WebCT purchase.  So I’m not holding my breath on that.

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