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In my school district, we have been using Blackboard Learn for as long as I can remember. According to Wikpedia, it's the "next generation learning management s

In my school district, we have been using Blackboard Learn for as long as I can remember. According to Wikpedia, it's the "next generation learning management system". In essence, it provides a way for teachers to interact with students, as well as for students to interact among themselves. Posting grades, class announcements, and homework assignments are only a few of the things teachers can do through the site. Students can view all of this information, as well as form groups, run blogs, use calendars, and create discussion boards. My point is that Blackboard is not a piece of ugly software. It is fully functional and has a nice and intuitive design to it. The article says that: Badly designed software with poor usability goes hand in hand with general appeal However, this software is not badly designed as it does what it is supposed to do (and more), and the usability is perfectly fine. Ironically, our district has switched to another piece of software to replace Blackboard's, but only because of the teacher's belief that it offered too many features. I think that the author of this post should rethink Blackboard.

camwest 16y ago
The author of the post is building a Blackboard competitor so what do you expect? They are trying to generat a little controversy.
RodgerTheGreat 16y ago
My experiences with Blackboard paint a far less flattering picture. An "intuitive" interface is entirely subjective, but I've hardly ever tried to do something new without wandering through confusing, cryptic and downright hidden menus for half an hour. Computed columns in the gradebook are crippled for no reason (formulas cannot be nested) and use an obscene[1] "keyboardless" entry form with pointless user-side validation. If you ever want to give yourself a migraine, crack open the source to any nontrivial page and try to tease apart the miles of needlessly complicated and frequently broken Javascript. Granted, my university does not use the latest-and-greatest version (yet) of Blackboard Learn, but for someone with your history of using the application these should not be totally alien points. [1]http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/9500/whygodwhyl.png http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/9500/whygodwhyl.png

camwest 16y ago

The author of the post is building a Blackboard competitor so what do you expect? They are trying to generat a little controversy.

RodgerTheGreat 16y ago

My experiences with Blackboard paint a far less flattering picture. An "intuitive" interface is entirely subjective, but I've hardly ever tried to do something new without wandering through confusing, cryptic and downright hidden menus for half an hour. Computed columns in the gradebook are crippled for no reason (formulas cannot be nested) and use an obscene[1] "keyboardless" entry form with pointless user-side validation. If you ever want to give yourself a migraine, crack open the source to any nontrivial page and try to tease apart the miles of needlessly complicated and frequently broken Javascript. Granted, my university does not use the latest-and-greatest version (yet) of Blackboard Learn, but for someone with your history of using the application these should not be totally alien points. [1]http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/9500/whygodwhyl.png http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/9500/whygodwhyl.png