5 ms·

A lot of issues were because of laws/policies required to install software on the premises... And making such complex software to perform well, when school sysa

by hippich 11y ago

A lot of issues were because of laws/policies required to install software on the premises... And making such complex software to perform well, when school sysadmin manages it, can be hard to make bulletproof. As laws and mindset changes, Blackboard moves to SaaS model with much more precise control over configuration, deployment, etc. As for software itself, if you are interested, google "new learning experience blackboard". This is 1 year old initiative to bring friendlier UI and as much as possible focus on student, instead of schools. And with acquisition of MyEdu there is push towards students owning their data, not schools. It is hard from both political (schools hate idea of not owning data) and technical standpoints, but we are slowly getting there :)

jules 11y ago
I just watched their promo video, and it's still terrible, but with a less ancient looking skin. Interesting how they can so completely miss the point.
- hippich 11y ago
  Would you mind explaining what is it missing? I work at Blackboard and would love to get honest feedback :)
  - jordigh 11y ago
    Blackboard is institutionally bad. The company is rotten to the core. It's pushed onto universities and schools through bribery, corruption, and deceit. I have seen this first-hand at two different places. The admins choose because it looks enterprisey and expensive. They figure they've spent the money, so the problem is solved. They also frequently get some very nice kickbacks for accepting to buy this piece of crap. It's buggy, hard to use, horrible to modify, expensive. The most honest feedback I can get you is this: for your own moral rectitude, quit this job and find yourself a more ethical job.
    - hippich 11y ago
      Thanks for hateback, but i choose to stay. Otherwise if all good people leave, who going to develop good software? (because blackboard will not die even with bad software per your post :)) I will fix it from inside.
      - jordigh 11y ago
        You won't solve the problem as a software developer. It's not a software problem. Try to climb the ranks into management and weed out corruption as you see it.
        hippich 11y ago
        Me and other good devs will solve software side of problems, and other good people will fix managerial one :)
        gress 11y ago
        Are you saying that everyone in management and engineering had been replaced and Blackboard is essentially a startup which happens to have inherited all the exciting contracts? If so, then maybe you stand a chance. Otherwise, I'm sure you'll learn a lot from the attempt.
        hippich 11y ago
        There is a lot of new people indeed (both managers and tech.) Quite a few startups were acquihired too. But I think most important factor - management openly concerned about competition and tries to push toward better product. And it appears to be much better timing too - institutions are more open to "cloud" today, than they were 10 years ago.
        jordigh 11y ago
        "Cloud" in the hands of a corrupt company... will not be good.
  - jules 11y ago
    There isn't anything missing, on the contrary, there's too much so that the things that people actually care about are not easy. Nobody cares about an "ecosystem of applications", or "out of classroom experience". Put yourself in the mind of the student. What are their top questions? 1. What homework is due? 2. When and where are my lectures? 3. What was taught or will be taught in some specific lecture? 4. What do I need to study for my exam? 5. At the start of the semester: Which courses are available, and info about each course (topic, teacher, book, etc.) Now, the promo video doesn't show very much, but let's see how you would find out about homework in current Blackboard. I need to log in (it doesn't keep you logged in). Then I click on "courses". Then for each course I need to click on that course and browse the course's pages to find out if homework is mentioned somewhere. And of course because the professors find blackboard terrible too, most of them put the homework on their personal webpages instead, so not even half of the info is there. All in all it's about 100 clicks to find out the answer to question (1). Maybe the professors are just putting the info in the wrong place which makes it hard for the students to find, but this also counts as a failure of Blackboard. What should you do instead. Keep people logged in. The main page right after logging in should be a full page calendar with the schedule of lectures, exams, and homework due. Then for each course there should be ONE page. Current blackboard has zillions of pages per course, but 99% are empty and the info related to one course easily fits on one page so you don't need to hunt among the empty pages for the info you need. The professors who have the course page on their personal website always use one page, and it's much more usable. On the page of a course there should be general info, and info for each lecture (but not on a separate page per lecture!). The lectures in the calendar should link to the per lecture info, which is on that one page per course, scrolled down. This way question (1) and question (2) can be answered by one glance at the calendar homepage. Question (3), (4) and (5) can be answered by clicking on a lecture in the calendar, i.e. one click away from the homepage. Now for a very important point: let the students edit this info! If some professor does not use blackboard or uses it badly, make sure the students do. Let them put up a page for the course, enter the lecture schedule in the calendar, mark when homework is due, etc. Blackboard is much more useful if all info is there. Of course you get nightmares about letting students edit this, but trust me it will be good. If wikipedia can let anonymous people all around the world edit it, blackboard can let non-anonymous students of a particular course edit it. The real problem of course is that Blackboard isn't built for students, and isn't built for teachers. It's built for the people who make the decision to buy Blackboard. That's why Blackboard will die like a fly to a competitor that does get this right. They will provide all this for free, initially, and students and teachers will use it out of their free will, and Blackboard will be even more empty than it already is. If you're losing 70% teachers who put info on their personal homepage, and are willing to learn HTML to avoid having to use Blackboard (!), imagine what a halfway decent competitor that isn't "code your own website in HTML" could do.

by hippich 11y ago

jules 11y ago

I just watched their promo video, and it's still terrible, but with a less ancient looking skin. Interesting how they can so completely miss the point.

hippich 11y ago
Would you mind explaining what is it missing? I work at Blackboard and would love to get honest feedback :)
- jordigh 11y ago
  Blackboard is institutionally bad. The company is rotten to the core. It's pushed onto universities and schools through bribery, corruption, and deceit. I have seen this first-hand at two different places. The admins choose because it looks enterprisey and expensive. They figure they've spent the money, so the problem is solved. They also frequently get some very nice kickbacks for accepting to buy this piece of crap. It's buggy, hard to use, horrible to modify, expensive. The most honest feedback I can get you is this: for your own moral rectitude, quit this job and find yourself a more ethical job.
  - hippich 11y ago
    Thanks for hateback, but i choose to stay. Otherwise if all good people leave, who going to develop good software? (because blackboard will not die even with bad software per your post :)) I will fix it from inside.
    - jordigh 11y ago
      You won't solve the problem as a software developer. It's not a software problem. Try to climb the ranks into management and weed out corruption as you see it.
      - hippich 11y ago
        Me and other good devs will solve software side of problems, and other good people will fix managerial one :)
        gress 11y ago
        Are you saying that everyone in management and engineering had been replaced and Blackboard is essentially a startup which happens to have inherited all the exciting contracts? If so, then maybe you stand a chance. Otherwise, I'm sure you'll learn a lot from the attempt.
        hippich 11y ago
        There is a lot of new people indeed (both managers and tech.) Quite a few startups were acquihired too. But I think most important factor - management openly concerned about competition and tries to push toward better product. And it appears to be much better timing too - institutions are more open to "cloud" today, than they were 10 years ago.
        jordigh 11y ago
        "Cloud" in the hands of a corrupt company... will not be good.
- jules 11y ago
  There isn't anything missing, on the contrary, there's too much so that the things that people actually care about are not easy. Nobody cares about an "ecosystem of applications", or "out of classroom experience". Put yourself in the mind of the student. What are their top questions? 1. What homework is due? 2. When and where are my lectures? 3. What was taught or will be taught in some specific lecture? 4. What do I need to study for my exam? 5. At the start of the semester: Which courses are available, and info about each course (topic, teacher, book, etc.) Now, the promo video doesn't show very much, but let's see how you would find out about homework in current Blackboard. I need to log in (it doesn't keep you logged in). Then I click on "courses". Then for each course I need to click on that course and browse the course's pages to find out if homework is mentioned somewhere. And of course because the professors find blackboard terrible too, most of them put the homework on their personal webpages instead, so not even half of the info is there. All in all it's about 100 clicks to find out the answer to question (1). Maybe the professors are just putting the info in the wrong place which makes it hard for the students to find, but this also counts as a failure of Blackboard. What should you do instead. Keep people logged in. The main page right after logging in should be a full page calendar with the schedule of lectures, exams, and homework due. Then for each course there should be ONE page. Current blackboard has zillions of pages per course, but 99% are empty and the info related to one course easily fits on one page so you don't need to hunt among the empty pages for the info you need. The professors who have the course page on their personal website always use one page, and it's much more usable. On the page of a course there should be general info, and info for each lecture (but not on a separate page per lecture!). The lectures in the calendar should link to the per lecture info, which is on that one page per course, scrolled down. This way question (1) and question (2) can be answered by one glance at the calendar homepage. Question (3), (4) and (5) can be answered by clicking on a lecture in the calendar, i.e. one click away from the homepage. Now for a very important point: let the students edit this info! If some professor does not use blackboard or uses it badly, make sure the students do. Let them put up a page for the course, enter the lecture schedule in the calendar, mark when homework is due, etc. Blackboard is much more useful if all info is there. Of course you get nightmares about letting students edit this, but trust me it will be good. If wikipedia can let anonymous people all around the world edit it, blackboard can let non-anonymous students of a particular course edit it. The real problem of course is that Blackboard isn't built for students, and isn't built for teachers. It's built for the people who make the decision to buy Blackboard. That's why Blackboard will die like a fly to a competitor that does get this right. They will provide all this for free, initially, and students and teachers will use it out of their free will, and Blackboard will be even more empty than it already is. If you're losing 70% teachers who put info on their personal homepage, and are willing to learn HTML to avoid having to use Blackboard (!), imagine what a halfway decent competitor that isn't "code your own website in HTML" could do.