5 ms·

Great writing. Who's competing with Blackboard in the educational software space? If they're really this awful there's probably a great opportunity.

ffreire 13y ago
The only other competitor that I am aware of is Moodle[0]. [0] http://moodle.com/ http://moodle.com/
- ericcumbee 13y ago
  We use Desire2Learn. from what I have seen comparing moodle to D2L or even blackboard, is a bit like a space shuttle to a Cesena.
  - blueblob 13y ago
    I went from a school that used Desire2Learn and switched to Blackboard and lost my hatred of Desire2Learn.
    - ericcumbee 13y ago
      When I went to College we used WebCT. WebCT got swallowed by Blackboard. When I started working for that College we had just finished migrating to D2L. from my understanding its been seen as a vast improvement.
- xtracto 13y ago
  There's also the Clarion/Dokeos/Claroline line. About 5 years ago I had to decide on one LMS for a site, and I went with those ones (Dokeos a the time). It was simple but feature-complete enough to achieve what we wanted. To the teachers we showed Moodle, it felt like a big screen full of confusing buttons.
ihuman 13y ago
Canvas is. http://www.instructure.com/ http://www.instructure.com/
- 616c 13y ago
  Saw it recently and I am curious how it will pan out. I work for people that would never make the change.
  - naiyt 13y ago
    My university has been using Canvas for several years now. It's actually not bad -- so much better than Blackboard was.
- rattray 13y ago
  Canvas appears to be preparing for an IPO: http://gigaom.com/2013/06/05/with-30m-led-by-bessemer-education-startup-instructure-eyes-ipo/ http://gigaom.com/2013/06/05/with-30m-led-by-bessemer-educat... We use it at my school and it's great. I also use their api as a developer at EmeraldExam.com and find it to be terrific. They're an open-source rails app: https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms EDIT: should also mention lore (lore.com), which was founded by some friends of mine and fairly recently purchased by a John Katzman company.
- nicolethenerd 13y ago
  Canvas is amazing. I cannot say enough good things about it (and no, I don't work for them). Love their SpeedGrader feature (allows you to quickly flip through your students assignments).
- binxbolling 13y ago
  I'm looking for the Instructure of business LMSes... does anyone have any recommendations? AFAIK Canvas is very ed-focused, but I'm still searching for a great equivalent in the business space that's playing David to Oracle or SAP's Goliath.
Edmond 13y ago
I tried: http://appynotebook.com http://appynotebook.com (open source) It is hard.
proverbialdawn 13y ago
Desire2Learn [0] 0:http://desire2learn.com/ http://desire2learn.com/
verelo 13y ago
From 2006-2008 i worked on a Blackboard compeditor. While back then, people ranging from administrators, teachers to students all hated the system, capturing their market share was a rough ride. We landed one major university and several private training organizations,however ultimately got squeezed out and decided to move onto bigger and better things. The issues people entering this market face range from Patents, that in my opinion should never have been issued, (http://www.google.com/patents/US6988138 http://www.google.com/patents/US6988138) to their insane license agreements that cost education providers a lot to walk away from.
nos4A2 13y ago
one more.. https://piazza.com/ https://piazza.com/
- yeukhon 13y ago
  Blackboard is more than that. Last time I checked (a year ago) Piazza is just a discussion and a place to release announcement.
  - rsingla 13y ago
    Not quite. Piazza allows instructors to post resources as well. I've taken a few courses that centered themselves around Piazza and the Piazza course page.
    - yeukhon 13y ago
      What about upload hw? Simple quiz automated grading? https://piazza.com/product/features https://piazza.com/product/features Paper comparison?
- shitlord 13y ago
  From a student's perspective, Piazza is really nice for communicating. I have never seen any of the professors at my university use it for anything else. They mostly use Sakai, and I don't really have any complaints about it. (and on an unrelated note, they have complained about getting spammed by Piazza)
- efnysien 13y ago
  Piazza is great at what it does: enabling discussion and making have a rolling wiki where they can talk to course staff about issues with the homework. However, they're alienating me with the career-recruitment spam - especially because it's not optional. Plus, isn't this all the more alienating for humanities courses? If it bothers me, and I'm enrolled in/TA'ing cs classes, it must bother the hell out of humanities majors with classes on piazza.
bphogan 13y ago
Our school switched from bb to Edvance360. (http://edvance360.com http://edvance360.com). I have no further comment to offer on this.
sizzle 13y ago
our school switched from blackboard to webct and all I can say is good riddance!
- acveilleux 13y ago
  McGill used webct and I thought it was some of the most atrociously designed software ever. Maybe it changed in the last few years.
skywhopper 13y ago
Blackboard bought out most of their commercial competition (WebCT, Angel) and tried to patent-troll the rest out of business (Desire2Learn for one). Open-source wise there's Moodle (PHP based) and Sakai (Java based). But from my POV within higher ed IT, my impression is that many of the big guys (Michigan, Indiana, Cal, NYU, Yale, MIT, Harvard, Stanford) are desperately searching for what's next. edX (Harvard+MIT along with contributions from Stanford) has open-sourced their software, I have no idea if it comes close. The problem with starting up is that to make anyone happy, a new Learning Management System needs to have two things working spectacularly well: 1. An online testing engine supporting both automated grading and human grading with a wide variety of question types and an easy to use test builder. 2. A gradebook tool that's easy to set up, can import and export spreadsheets, and can support any wild scoring system a faculty member can devise (and they can come up with some doozies). It also needs to integrate with any and every other tool in the system, as some faculty somewhere will want to grade every single type of activity students can perform in the system. In addition to those two baseline elements it needs a world-class collaboration system for file-sharing, plus messaging and forum tools and online chat. It needs to support multiple class sections with unified resources, ad-hoc class groups, and student-initiated study groups. It needs to support fine-grained permission schemes based on classes, instructors, grad assistants, sections, individual students, and groups. Every file, test, assignment, forum, and chat room all need to be able to be gated access based on student activity so that, for example, a quiz must be passed before getting access to a document which leads into an assignment followed by a forum-based discussion. Research is also critical to support, and your system will need to be accessible in a secure way to collaborators, guest instructors, and remotely-enrolled students around the globe, in a way that doesn't make the faculty wait more than a few minutes to grant those people access. All of this will need to be provided in a fully responsive user interface that scales well from 4k screens down to tablets and smartphones, including the testing and gradebook engines. You'll also need a free mobile app that provides all the same funcionality in a reliable native interface on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry OS, and more. You also need to integrate with the University's student information system, and update enrollments in courses and sections on the fly as students add/drop and courses change, and send grades to the SIS in return. You need to integrate with external tools at the university such as wikis, message boards, and eTextbooks; and outside including cloud-based calendars and document sharing tools including Google Apps for Education and Office365. You'll also want a instructor evaluation system, electronic portfolio functionality, program-level assurance of learning awareness, institutional assessment reporting, user activity monitoring. Oh and all of this needs to be customizable to match the traditional way of doing business at each of thousands of different universities. Business processes are not up for compromise. Notice I've left out concerns of usability, security, performance, stability, ease of deployment and upgrading, etc. That's because those are at the bottom of the list of priorities for the people with the money. So... good luck.
benched 13y ago
Not really an answer to your question anymore, but this is perhaps a little-known anecdote. The group within Microsoft that produced Encarta had a lot of teachers in it. After Encarta was retired, that group took it on themselves to create a lean competitor to Blackboard. The effort lasted about 2.5 years. It suffered from a lot of internal political resistance, because at the executive level, competing with Blackboard was viewed as being neither a smart battle, nor 'synergizing' enough with the Windows/Office prime directive. However, what eventually killed the project was the recognition/fear of how much bureaucratic resistance there would be from schools themselves, and perhaps to a lesser degree the tangle of privacy laws. That is, overall it was decided the risk/reward didn't make sense.
thejhnz 13y ago
Another one which is based in New Zealand coming out this year. http://mepo.co http://mepo.co

ffreire 13y ago

The only other competitor that I am aware of is Moodle[0]. [0] http://moodle.com/ http://moodle.com/

ericcumbee 13y ago
We use Desire2Learn. from what I have seen comparing moodle to D2L or even blackboard, is a bit like a space shuttle to a Cesena.
- blueblob 13y ago
  I went from a school that used Desire2Learn and switched to Blackboard and lost my hatred of Desire2Learn.
  - ericcumbee 13y ago
    When I went to College we used WebCT. WebCT got swallowed by Blackboard. When I started working for that College we had just finished migrating to D2L. from my understanding its been seen as a vast improvement.
xtracto 13y ago
There's also the Clarion/Dokeos/Claroline line. About 5 years ago I had to decide on one LMS for a site, and I went with those ones (Dokeos a the time). It was simple but feature-complete enough to achieve what we wanted. To the teachers we showed Moodle, it felt like a big screen full of confusing buttons.

ihuman 13y ago

Canvas is. http://www.instructure.com/ http://www.instructure.com/

616c 13y ago
Saw it recently and I am curious how it will pan out. I work for people that would never make the change.
- naiyt 13y ago
  My university has been using Canvas for several years now. It's actually not bad -- so much better than Blackboard was.
rattray 13y ago
Canvas appears to be preparing for an IPO: http://gigaom.com/2013/06/05/with-30m-led-by-bessemer-education-startup-instructure-eyes-ipo/ http://gigaom.com/2013/06/05/with-30m-led-by-bessemer-educat... We use it at my school and it's great. I also use their api as a developer at EmeraldExam.com and find it to be terrific. They're an open-source rails app: https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms EDIT: should also mention lore (lore.com), which was founded by some friends of mine and fairly recently purchased by a John Katzman company.
nicolethenerd 13y ago
Canvas is amazing. I cannot say enough good things about it (and no, I don't work for them). Love their SpeedGrader feature (allows you to quickly flip through your students assignments).
binxbolling 13y ago
I'm looking for the Instructure of business LMSes... does anyone have any recommendations? AFAIK Canvas is very ed-focused, but I'm still searching for a great equivalent in the business space that's playing David to Oracle or SAP's Goliath.

Edmond 13y ago

I tried: http://appynotebook.com http://appynotebook.com (open source) It is hard.

proverbialdawn 13y ago

Desire2Learn [0] 0:http://desire2learn.com/ http://desire2learn.com/

verelo 13y ago

From 2006-2008 i worked on a Blackboard compeditor. While back then, people ranging from administrators, teachers to students all hated the system, capturing their market share was a rough ride. We landed one major university and several private training organizations,however ultimately got squeezed out and decided to move onto bigger and better things. The issues people entering this market face range from Patents, that in my opinion should never have been issued, (http://www.google.com/patents/US6988138 http://www.google.com/patents/US6988138) to their insane license agreements that cost education providers a lot to walk away from.

nos4A2 13y ago

one more.. https://piazza.com/ https://piazza.com/

yeukhon 13y ago
Blackboard is more than that. Last time I checked (a year ago) Piazza is just a discussion and a place to release announcement.
- rsingla 13y ago
  Not quite. Piazza allows instructors to post resources as well. I've taken a few courses that centered themselves around Piazza and the Piazza course page.
  - yeukhon 13y ago
    What about upload hw? Simple quiz automated grading? https://piazza.com/product/features https://piazza.com/product/features Paper comparison?
shitlord 13y ago
From a student's perspective, Piazza is really nice for communicating. I have never seen any of the professors at my university use it for anything else. They mostly use Sakai, and I don't really have any complaints about it. (and on an unrelated note, they have complained about getting spammed by Piazza)
efnysien 13y ago
Piazza is great at what it does: enabling discussion and making have a rolling wiki where they can talk to course staff about issues with the homework. However, they're alienating me with the career-recruitment spam - especially because it's not optional. Plus, isn't this all the more alienating for humanities courses? If it bothers me, and I'm enrolled in/TA'ing cs classes, it must bother the hell out of humanities majors with classes on piazza.

bphogan 13y ago

Our school switched from bb to Edvance360. (http://edvance360.com http://edvance360.com). I have no further comment to offer on this.

sizzle 13y ago

our school switched from blackboard to webct and all I can say is good riddance!

acveilleux 13y ago
McGill used webct and I thought it was some of the most atrociously designed software ever. Maybe it changed in the last few years.

skywhopper 13y ago

Blackboard bought out most of their commercial competition (WebCT, Angel) and tried to patent-troll the rest out of business (Desire2Learn for one). Open-source wise there's Moodle (PHP based) and Sakai (Java based). But from my POV within higher ed IT, my impression is that many of the big guys (Michigan, Indiana, Cal, NYU, Yale, MIT, Harvard, Stanford) are desperately searching for what's next. edX (Harvard+MIT along with contributions from Stanford) has open-sourced their software, I have no idea if it comes close. The problem with starting up is that to make anyone happy, a new Learning Management System needs to have two things working spectacularly well: 1. An online testing engine supporting both automated grading and human grading with a wide variety of question types and an easy to use test builder. 2. A gradebook tool that's easy to set up, can import and export spreadsheets, and can support any wild scoring system a faculty member can devise (and they can come up with some doozies). It also needs to integrate with any and every other tool in the system, as some faculty somewhere will want to grade every single type of activity students can perform in the system. In addition to those two baseline elements it needs a world-class collaboration system for file-sharing, plus messaging and forum tools and online chat. It needs to support multiple class sections with unified resources, ad-hoc class groups, and student-initiated study groups. It needs to support fine-grained permission schemes based on classes, instructors, grad assistants, sections, individual students, and groups. Every file, test, assignment, forum, and chat room all need to be able to be gated access based on student activity so that, for example, a quiz must be passed before getting access to a document which leads into an assignment followed by a forum-based discussion. Research is also critical to support, and your system will need to be accessible in a secure way to collaborators, guest instructors, and remotely-enrolled students around the globe, in a way that doesn't make the faculty wait more than a few minutes to grant those people access. All of this will need to be provided in a fully responsive user interface that scales well from 4k screens down to tablets and smartphones, including the testing and gradebook engines. You'll also need a free mobile app that provides all the same funcionality in a reliable native interface on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry OS, and more. You also need to integrate with the University's student information system, and update enrollments in courses and sections on the fly as students add/drop and courses change, and send grades to the SIS in return. You need to integrate with external tools at the university such as wikis, message boards, and eTextbooks; and outside including cloud-based calendars and document sharing tools including Google Apps for Education and Office365. You'll also want a instructor evaluation system, electronic portfolio functionality, program-level assurance of learning awareness, institutional assessment reporting, user activity monitoring. Oh and all of this needs to be customizable to match the traditional way of doing business at each of thousands of different universities. Business processes are not up for compromise. Notice I've left out concerns of usability, security, performance, stability, ease of deployment and upgrading, etc. That's because those are at the bottom of the list of priorities for the people with the money. So... good luck.

benched 13y ago

Not really an answer to your question anymore, but this is perhaps a little-known anecdote. The group within Microsoft that produced Encarta had a lot of teachers in it. After Encarta was retired, that group took it on themselves to create a lean competitor to Blackboard. The effort lasted about 2.5 years. It suffered from a lot of internal political resistance, because at the executive level, competing with Blackboard was viewed as being neither a smart battle, nor 'synergizing' enough with the Windows/Office prime directive. However, what eventually killed the project was the recognition/fear of how much bureaucratic resistance there would be from schools themselves, and perhaps to a lesser degree the tangle of privacy laws. That is, overall it was decided the risk/reward didn't make sense.

thejhnz 13y ago

Another one which is based in New Zealand coming out this year. http://mepo.co http://mepo.co