5 ms·

I just started a postdoc at NYU and have been forced into using Blackboard to teach my class. Inspiring alternatives can't come fast enough.

brainid 15y ago
I am not sure how inspired it is, but Sakai is a very good open source alternative to Blackboard used at many Universities. http://sakaiproject.org/ http://sakaiproject.org/
- _delirium 15y ago
  I found Sakai, at least in the "T-Square" rebranding used at Georgia Tech, pretty annoying also (as of a few years ago), but at least it isn't sucking millions of dollars from their budget. At the time (possibly now fixed?) it had a very strong single-session assumption that would cause weird things to happen if you did obvious tabbed-browsing things like opening multiple users' assignments in new tabs. The "solution" was big red warnings at the top of every page about how you shouldn't do that.
- tikhonj 15y ago
  We use a system built on sakai at my university. While it isn't horrible, it isn't brilliant either. In the CS department we have a command-line utility for submitting homework and grades, and the classes just have a simple website. Everybody likes that system more than the one based on sakai, which should give you a good idea of how much functionality sakai brings. Additionally, everybody is now using a system called piazza[1] as an online forum for the class instead of using the one provided by sakai. I rather like it and it has met considerable success in most of the classes that deployed it. Of course, some of my professors are very enthusiastic about this system; one of them even has a testimonial on piazza's main page. [1]: http://www.piazza.com http://www.piazza.com
krupan 15y ago
My school used blackboard and it was horrible. Instructure (http://www.instructure.com/ http://www.instructure.com/) is a start-up that is competing with Blackboard. Their product, Canvas, is available as open source and their CEO, Josh Coates, was founder of Mozy (which was pretty darn successful).

brainid 15y ago

I am not sure how inspired it is, but Sakai is a very good open source alternative to Blackboard used at many Universities. http://sakaiproject.org/ http://sakaiproject.org/

_delirium 15y ago
I found Sakai, at least in the "T-Square" rebranding used at Georgia Tech, pretty annoying also (as of a few years ago), but at least it isn't sucking millions of dollars from their budget. At the time (possibly now fixed?) it had a very strong single-session assumption that would cause weird things to happen if you did obvious tabbed-browsing things like opening multiple users' assignments in new tabs. The "solution" was big red warnings at the top of every page about how you shouldn't do that.
tikhonj 15y ago
We use a system built on sakai at my university. While it isn't horrible, it isn't brilliant either. In the CS department we have a command-line utility for submitting homework and grades, and the classes just have a simple website. Everybody likes that system more than the one based on sakai, which should give you a good idea of how much functionality sakai brings. Additionally, everybody is now using a system called piazza[1] as an online forum for the class instead of using the one provided by sakai. I rather like it and it has met considerable success in most of the classes that deployed it. Of course, some of my professors are very enthusiastic about this system; one of them even has a testimonial on piazza's main page. [1]: http://www.piazza.com http://www.piazza.com

krupan 15y ago

My school used blackboard and it was horrible. Instructure (http://www.instructure.com/ http://www.instructure.com/) is a start-up that is competing with Blackboard. Their product, Canvas, is available as open source and their CEO, Josh Coates, was founder of Mozy (which was pretty darn successful).