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I develop free software because of CUNY and Blackboard

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Re: I develop free software because of CUNY and Blackboard

#41

Post by Homunculiheaded »

misterbwong wrote: post #19

What is the reason for Blackboard and eCollege's dominance? Is it truly because the school "IT departments are dominated by Microsoft-trained technicians and corporate-owned CIOs" or is there another reason? I understand that Bb is very litigious and has a pretty broad patent on "eLearning" but that doesn't seem like it's stopping its competitors.

I worked in Higher Ed for a while, and when I left I thought "oh it should be really easy to create a company that makes better software than much of the academic software out there, probably for way less money as well". But then it hit me. Almost everything, even pretty inexpensive stuff is purchased by large and mostly unqualified committees (with a requirement that at least one member be insane). The process is usually drawn out over many months, even years (not just for blackboard scale sized products). The result is that to survive the key is not a great product, but to have patience and lots of salespeople in suits to send to listen to these committees and make them feel like you care. (In my experience even if you know what product you want, you still have to go through the ritual, the fastest I ever saw software purchased was 4 months, and that still required bringing in sales people even when we knew what product we wanted)

A team of 1-3 smart developers could create a product that is significantly better than blackboard and orders of magnitude cheaper in less than a year. But the process of selling the product would take more energy and resources than they could commit. A team of smart developers would quickly realize there are much better ways to make money and sell software. I believe this is the core of why most academic software (institutional level) is terrible, the only companies that would put up with this are ones that are more interested exploitation than creating great software.

Re: I develop free software because of CUNY and Blackboard

#42

Post by calloc »

objclxt wrote: post #26
calloc wrote: post #5

My school used eCollege, a Blackboard competitor. From what I have heard from professors that have used both they are both on par with each other in terms of being absolute shit. When I was still in school the students attempted to push the administration to go for an open source alternative called Moodle which is miles ahead of anything else. Speaking of Blackboard, apparently some security vulnerabilities were foun…

When have security vulnerabilities not been found in Blackboard? Seriously, anyone in Instructional Technology can tell you that Blackboard isn't worth the metaphorical paper it's coded on. In fact, it's so poorly put together perhaps the paper isn't metaphorical at all, and Blackboard are actually writing out their code by hand and having trained monkeys type the result up.

eCollege isn't much better from what I've heard...

Re: I develop free software because of CUNY and Blackboard

#43

Post by jules »

danteembermage wrote: post #17

I use Blackboard as professor a lot, and while pedagogically it can do amazing things technically it's poorly done and annoying. I think the author wrongly poo-poos the one-stop-shop feature of Blackboard. The fact that the annoying quiz making facility grades automatically and posts grades to the annoying grade center that can't even do weighted grades right is still pretty great compared to the alternative (which i…

What would an ideal tool for what you want to do look like?

Re: I develop free software because of CUNY and Blackboard

#44

Post by niels_olson »

danteembermage wrote: post #17

I use Blackboard as professor a lot, and while pedagogically it can do amazing things technically it's poorly done and annoying. I think the author wrongly poo-poos the one-stop-shop feature of Blackboard. The fact that the annoying quiz making facility grades automatically and posts grades to the annoying grade center that can't even do weighted grades right is still pretty great compared to the alternative (which i…

> I love learning content management systems and by implication Blackboard despite its many egregious flaws.

Your obliviousness is obvious in your writing. So let me offer what you can hopefully take as a Penn-and-Teller-esque response.

Student and former independent LMS developer here. No offense, sir, but profs like you are a major part of the problem. Any interest you have in LMSes is unnatural. You're a professor. Your students did not sign up to be your test subjects. Do you have any idea how much time is wasted by your students in the byzantine hell of your personal online frolicking? 3 sections x 20 x 1 - 2 hours a day makes ... we might be better off skipping your class and deriving Black-Scholes from first principles.

Your university quite possibly has rewarded you for your LMS geekery by making you some sort of educational tech committee member, maybe even the chairman. Your students blow sunshine up your ass because you hold their futures in your hands, but I'm sure you ignore all that. Blackboard will blow what ever you want up your derriere, so long as you or your committee keeps telling the deans that Blackboard is making progress, or has new feature "x". In fact, Blackboard will blow harder if you question their utility.

> Universities love to feel they are on the cutting edge of "technology" and clearly have deep pockets for this stuff

Sir, you are one of them -- the people at the university -- that the author wouldn't mind actually taking what he has to say to heart.

Re: I develop free software because of CUNY and Blackboard

#45

Post by danteembermage »

niels_olson wrote: post #44
danteembermage wrote: post #17

I use Blackboard as professor a lot, and while pedagogically it can do amazing things technically it's poorly done and annoying. I think the author wrongly poo-poos the one-stop-shop feature of Blackboard. The fact that the annoying quiz making facility grades automatically and posts grades to the annoying grade center that can't even do weighted grades right is still pretty great compared to the alternative (which i…

> I love learning content management systems and by implication Blackboard despite its many egregious flaws. Your obliviousness is obvious in your writing. So let me offer what you can hopefully take as a Penn-and-Teller-esque response. Student and former independent LMS developer here. No offense, sir, but profs like you are a major part of the problem. Any interest you have in LMSes is unnatural. You're a professor…

So sell me! Blackboard does a million things but I really only care about 1. posting syllabuses, links, and documents 2. making randomly generated auto-grading quizzes 3. auto-updating a gradebook.

Does your software do these things better? Does it do things I didn't even know I wanted? What are the big ways you hope to make the world of LMS better? Non-techies experience great pain learning complex new software, what awesome improvements justify a switch? I'd love to have some alternatives and some ammo to back them with.

Re: I develop free software because of CUNY and Blackboard

#46

Post by ggchappell »

I am a university professor who occasionally uses Blackboard. Some thoughts:

I certainly agree that Blackboard is overpriced and somewhat painful to use. I don't use it much. I mainly create my own web pages from scratch, which I find to be about as easy as using BB, and rather more conducive to my aims (which include making most course materials available to the public).

But then there's this:

> It forces, and reinforces, an entirely teacher-centric pedagogical model.

Um ... that assumes that the BB area is the class, which I find rather silly. I use my websites (and BB now & then) to get information to students, including handouts, announcements, solutions, links, and source code. I could do all this on a physical bulletin board, but the paper cost would be excessive, and it would require students to type in source code, instead of simply downloading it.

But my website is not intended to be some collaborative space where students learn together. On the contrary, the model I follow is to provide my students with resources, and allow them to learn as they see fit (together, if they wish; sometimes I require it). After all, high school is over. My students are adults. They run their own lives. And there are plenty of collaborative learning spaces around here. They are called "tables", and they are used a lot.

This is not to say I'm against the online-collaborative idea. Certainly, if someone figures out how to enhance the educational experience with some kind of computerized thingy, then I say more power to them. Let's get lots of start-ups in this area to come up with lots of interesting things. But in the mean time, I don't feel obligated to somehow "manage" my students' total educational experience.

> The very concept of a “learning management system” may itself be wrongheaded.

Oh, certainly. But after all, "learning management system" is just a term invented by marketing people. We don't have to take it to heart.

Re: I develop free software because of CUNY and Blackboard

#47

Post by danteembermage »

jules wrote: post #43
danteembermage wrote: post #17

I use Blackboard as professor a lot, and while pedagogically it can do amazing things technically it's poorly done and annoying. I think the author wrongly poo-poos the one-stop-shop feature of Blackboard. The fact that the annoying quiz making facility grades automatically and posts grades to the annoying grade center that can't even do weighted grades right is still pretty great compared to the alternative (which i…

What would an ideal tool for what you want to do look like?

That's a tough question to answer, although just behaving sanely would be a start (if you overtype a grade in a neighboring column it destroys the old grade immediately and permanently, Blackboards solution to prevent this is to make you press enter in each and every cell in the table)

A pain point for me is Blackboard can sort of create exam questions with a formula for answers, but it's quite buggy and very low featured (for example it claims to do exponents but I wouldn't trust it to calculate a standard deviation). Since professors using Blackboard for exams end up entering many questions into the system (unless the textbook vendor supplies a Blackboard test bank, talk about lock in!) making that as fast and as intuitive as possible is a good place to start.

I did some Googling and found this: http://www.cod.edu/it/blackboard/testgenerators.htm#BYUI so apparently this kind of thing is doable.

Re: I develop free software because of CUNY and Blackboard

#48

Post by aufreak3 »

danteembermage wrote: post #45
niels_olson wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I love learning content management systems and by implication Blackboard despite its many egregious flaws. Your obliviousness is obvious in your writing. So let me offer what you can hopefully take as a Penn-and-Teller-esque response. Student and former independent LMS developer here. No offense, sir, but profs like you are a major part of the problem. Any interest you have in LMSes is unnatural. You're a professor…

So sell me! Blackboard does a million things but I really only care about 1. posting syllabuses, links, and documents 2. making randomly generated auto-grading quizzes 3. auto-updating a gradebook. Does your software do these things better? Does it do things I didn't even know I wanted? What are the big ways you hope to make the world of LMS better? Non-techies experience great pain learning complex new software, wha…

I think what niels_olson is asking for is to weigh your time saved versus the collective spent time of the students in some measure when considering the use of an LMS tool.

(Disclaimer: I don't use Blackboard, but am curious about the state of LMS art.)

Re: I develop free software because of CUNY and Blackboard

#49

Post by _delirium »

aufreak3 wrote: post #48
danteembermage wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So sell me! Blackboard does a million things but I really only care about 1. posting syllabuses, links, and documents 2. making randomly generated auto-grading quizzes 3. auto-updating a gradebook. Does your software do these things better? Does it do things I didn't even know I wanted? What are the big ways you hope to make the world of LMS better? Non-techies experience great pain learning complex new software, wha…

I think what niels_olson is asking for is to weigh your time saved versus the collective spent time of the students in some measure when considering the use of an LMS tool. (Disclaimer: I don't use Blackboard, but am curious about the state of LMS art.)

I know I always found these a huge imposition for no gain as a student. Email to a designated address: easy. Run a Unix command on the CS department server to submit: also easy. Deal with some bullshit LMS to figure out what it wants: hours of my time.

Even as a prof, they're a pretty mixed bag. For a lot of simple things, it's infinitely easier to ask students to just email me something as an attachment, with a particular subject line, and then set up a quick procmail filter to grab and process the attachments. Then you can actually run scripts on the result, which it turns out in computer science is something you sometimes want to do (you might even want to run tests on code!). The role of these LMSs appears to be to make it as hard as possible to just get a damn zip file with all the data so I can run my scripts, and then also difficult to upload my grading results back into the system. Maybe that would be okay if they included internally all the functionality I might need, but: 1) it's hard to use any functionality they do include; and 2) as far as I can tell, they don't include anything like compiling code with gcc and running instructor-submitted tests on it.

Re: I develop free software because of CUNY and Blackboard

#50

Post by binxbolling »

calloc wrote: post #5

My school used eCollege, a Blackboard competitor. From what I have heard from professors that have used both they are both on par with each other in terms of being absolute shit. When I was still in school the students attempted to push the administration to go for an open source alternative called Moodle which is miles ahead of anything else. Speaking of Blackboard, apparently some security vulnerabilities were foun…

I have trouble believing anybody who has used Moodle as either an administrator or a student would really believe it's "miles ahead of anything else" unless you'd literally never looked at another LMS at all.
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