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 teach

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.