7 ms·
I hope/wish so. Blackboard is one of the most unpleasant user experiences out there. It's not even well implemented in the back-end, too.
by SlyShy 16y ago
I hope/wish so. Blackboard is one of the most unpleasant user experiences out there. It's not even well implemented in the back-end, too.
- NathanKP 16y agoI completely agree. At my school Blackboard gets more and more unstable as the semester passes. By the end of the semester we begin to get bizarre and meaningless error messages, and it slows to a crawl.
- adbge 16y agoOh, please God. I hope Google does to Blackboard what Rome did to Carthage.
- yummyfajitas 16y agoGetting a course management system set up took me 33 minutes last semester: 30 minutes failing to get blackboard working, and 3 minutes setting up a google group.
- dhimes 16y agoThey are also patent trolls.
- frederickcook 16y agoThe term patent trolls gets thrown around too much. Did Blackboard put together a patent portfolio, and use it dissuade potential competitors? Or do they have a separate business unit that writes patents without actually producing any valuable product and seeking to make money from lawsuits? The latter is a patent troll; the former is a business best-practice. (I feel compelled to say that I don't agree with software patents in any form, but until the system is reformed, it's stupid not to play by the rules.
- dhimes 16y agoYou are correct in that I'm using the term loosely. Blackboard introduced a product which was marginally better (even that is arguable- I didn't use it and I was one of the first people they pitched, to my knowledge, as I was chairing a technology committee at a huge community college with a lot of tech funding just a few miles from their offices) than what we could do with excite/yahoo at the time. They went public early and were quickly on the ropes trying to make their stuff work. They then turned to intimidation of their competitors by trying to (so I understand, but probably not in an unbiased way) stretch the coverage of their patents rather than giving the teachers the system that they need. They were(are?) way overvalued and trying to defend their position, not by getting better but by stifling innovation. The one they couldn't intimidate they bought (webCT) to the detriment of us all. IMHO, what is stupid about what they did was to not innovate once they had the financial advantage after going public. They were the only public player at that time, and raised quite a bit of capital as I recall.
- fragmede 16y agoI wouldn't call them a patent troll, but their patent's claims (http://mfeldstein.com/images/uploads/Blackboard_Patent_Claims.pdf http://mfeldstein.com/images/uploads/Blackboard_Patent_Claim... via Wikipedia) are on the level of Amazon's one-click patent. And Blackboard HAS used them offensively (unsuccessfully, I might add). The patent was eventually overturned, but at non-insignificant cost to all parties involved. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard_Inc.#Blackboard_legal_issues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard_Inc.#Blackboard_lega...) As business, the choice to use your patent offensively to go after a competitor may come at the expense of, y'know, actually improving your product,which it seems Blackboard has chosen to do.
- ygd 16y agoI bet you any novice with a little bit of experience in web frameworks could write something better than Blackboard Educational Suite.
- mambodog 16y agoUnfortunately I feel like Blackboart/LMS has entangled itself within my University's systems such that it will have to be removed with fire... I don't see it happening any time soon. :\
- gte910h 16y agoAre you kidding? Universities HATE it, but they sue all the competitors into oblivion via patents. Methinks this will not be as successful vs google.