12 ms·

Have you ever seen or used Blackboard? It's probably the worst "large" software system I've used outside of something built within an enterprise.

nicoburns 7y ago
Blackboard is awful. When I was at uni, I actually wrote a scraper to auto-download my course content so I didn't have to use the Blackboard UI. It's upwards of £100k/year too. Definitely a market ripe for a competitor!
- Insanity 7y ago
  And honestly, blackboard got worse over the years! They got a UI overhaul a couple of years ago and I hardly recognize it. But it seems like everything is harder to find than it used to be. Back when I was a SE student, we wrote an application for our university that students could use to access their examination schedules without having to look through the Blackboard calendar. Which was so much better, because you did not have to log in and it was faster than going through Blackboard's UI...
- jakejarvis 7y ago
  My university switched to something called Canvas (right after I graduated, of course) and it's incredibly slick, on top of it being fully OSS. Sakai is out there too — the quality isn't much better than Blackboard but at least it's free! https://www.instructure.com/canvas/ https://www.instructure.com/canvas/ https://www.sakailms.org/ https://www.sakailms.org/
  - veridies 7y ago
    I think most of the universities in California have been switching to Canvas. I also use Moodle, which is also FLOSS; personally I strongly prefer the UX to Canvas, but it may be less enterprise-y.
  - moftz 7y ago
    My school transitioned to Canvas from Sakai, it was like night and day in usability. I used Blackboard in highschool so even Sakai offered a major increase in usability. Sakai and Canvas seem easy enough to setup that I can't imagine Blackboard can continue making money for much longer. There's another system called LON-CAPA (written in Perl) that seems ancient compared the other competing systems. It was very easy to use and "just worked" but it felt like it was straight out of the Web 1.0 era.
- snarfy 7y ago
  Except they have patents on 'e-learning'.
- LeifCarrotson 7y ago
  The awful UI and pervasive install base shows that Blackboard's fitness in the market is not tied to their UI or other tech decisions. Building a successful competitor to Blackboard is not predicated on your ability to design a prettier, faster, more usable interface or a simpler, more powerful feature set. It's 100% based on your ability to do enterprise sales to universities.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    Just because the incumbent lacks finesse doesn't mean you can 'eat their lunch' without having better features or a better UI. People need a reason to change the software they use; when it means retraining a district full of teachers then the reason needs to be good.
    - LeifCarrotson 7y ago
      A better product may be necessary, but it's definitely not sufficient.
      - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
        Absolutely. Sometimes, unfortunately, you can get away with a worse product and better marketing!
    - radicalbyte 7y ago
      It's not just a bad UI, it's also extremely buggy. The problem is that the market is next to impossible to get into. They're like Photoshop - they've got an army of people trained in using their super complex UI. It's the de facto standard in the market; they've built a massive moat which will be extremely hard to get past.
  - tracker1 7y ago
    In the early 00's I developed a test LMS (SCORM) for courseware the company I was working for at the time was building... only because all the LMS software was a convoluted mess. That test LMS became the LMS for a few major airlines and a large fortune 50 company (uplifted through a few software shifts). It lasted for more than a decade before being replaced by an "Enterprise" solution, I think it was Blackboard (took 2 years to get it setup right, and people in the know still don't like it.
- skinnymuch 7y ago
  I think Rutgers in NJ used Sakai. As well as some other schools. It’s not much better but it’s far cheaper. Canvas is the new kid on the block. Even Canvas has issues though so it’s great as a replacement for Blackboard, but there’s still plenty more that can be disrupted and improved.
- gempir 7y ago
  When I was at school they were using Moodle. And I gotta say Moodle was very solid. The UI wasn't terrible and everything worked. But the big plus: Open Source and completely free to self-host
Aeolun 7y ago
So it’s the worst software system short of 90% of the other stuff you’ve seen?
- albertsondev 7y ago
  I'd assume they meant "built within an enterprise" in terms of internal tooling.

nicoburns 7y ago

Blackboard is awful. When I was at uni, I actually wrote a scraper to auto-download my course content so I didn't have to use the Blackboard UI. It's upwards of £100k/year too. Definitely a market ripe for a competitor!

Insanity 7y ago
And honestly, blackboard got worse over the years! They got a UI overhaul a couple of years ago and I hardly recognize it. But it seems like everything is harder to find than it used to be. Back when I was a SE student, we wrote an application for our university that students could use to access their examination schedules without having to look through the Blackboard calendar. Which was so much better, because you did not have to log in and it was faster than going through Blackboard's UI...
jakejarvis 7y ago
My university switched to something called Canvas (right after I graduated, of course) and it's incredibly slick, on top of it being fully OSS. Sakai is out there too — the quality isn't much better than Blackboard but at least it's free! https://www.instructure.com/canvas/ https://www.instructure.com/canvas/ https://www.sakailms.org/ https://www.sakailms.org/
- veridies 7y ago
  I think most of the universities in California have been switching to Canvas. I also use Moodle, which is also FLOSS; personally I strongly prefer the UX to Canvas, but it may be less enterprise-y.
- moftz 7y ago
  My school transitioned to Canvas from Sakai, it was like night and day in usability. I used Blackboard in highschool so even Sakai offered a major increase in usability. Sakai and Canvas seem easy enough to setup that I can't imagine Blackboard can continue making money for much longer. There's another system called LON-CAPA (written in Perl) that seems ancient compared the other competing systems. It was very easy to use and "just worked" but it felt like it was straight out of the Web 1.0 era.
snarfy 7y ago
Except they have patents on 'e-learning'.
LeifCarrotson 7y ago
The awful UI and pervasive install base shows that Blackboard's fitness in the market is not tied to their UI or other tech decisions. Building a successful competitor to Blackboard is not predicated on your ability to design a prettier, faster, more usable interface or a simpler, more powerful feature set. It's 100% based on your ability to do enterprise sales to universities.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Just because the incumbent lacks finesse doesn't mean you can 'eat their lunch' without having better features or a better UI. People need a reason to change the software they use; when it means retraining a district full of teachers then the reason needs to be good.
  - LeifCarrotson 7y ago
    A better product may be necessary, but it's definitely not sufficient.
    - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      Absolutely. Sometimes, unfortunately, you can get away with a worse product and better marketing!
  - radicalbyte 7y ago
    It's not just a bad UI, it's also extremely buggy. The problem is that the market is next to impossible to get into. They're like Photoshop - they've got an army of people trained in using their super complex UI. It's the de facto standard in the market; they've built a massive moat which will be extremely hard to get past.
- tracker1 7y ago
  In the early 00's I developed a test LMS (SCORM) for courseware the company I was working for at the time was building... only because all the LMS software was a convoluted mess. That test LMS became the LMS for a few major airlines and a large fortune 50 company (uplifted through a few software shifts). It lasted for more than a decade before being replaced by an "Enterprise" solution, I think it was Blackboard (took 2 years to get it setup right, and people in the know still don't like it.
skinnymuch 7y ago
I think Rutgers in NJ used Sakai. As well as some other schools. It’s not much better but it’s far cheaper. Canvas is the new kid on the block. Even Canvas has issues though so it’s great as a replacement for Blackboard, but there’s still plenty more that can be disrupted and improved.
gempir 7y ago
When I was at school they were using Moodle. And I gotta say Moodle was very solid. The UI wasn't terrible and everything worked. But the big plus: Open Source and completely free to self-host

Aeolun 7y ago

So it’s the worst software system short of 90% of the other stuff you’ve seen?

albertsondev 7y ago
I'd assume they meant "built within an enterprise" in terms of internal tooling.