51–60 of 63 posts
Doesn't anyone think that this is the perfect market to be entering these days? The market has a ton of potential (as evident by all the money that is being spent on it) and the satisfaction with the current leaders is seriously lacking.
Are there any YC companies that are tackling this area?
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 feel your pain - both in terms of product features as well as the way Blackboard do business, which is exactly why we set about creating an alternative.
You might be interested in what we're doing with Lexim (http://www.lexim.com.au) - a new take on an old and outdated approach to delivering teaching online.
User enjoyment and efficiency are two of the main drivers in our design approach. In my (biased) opinion, I don't think it could be easier to get documents, links and your syllabus into the hands of students. We have randomised, auto-graded quizzes that update the gradebook (without destroying the previous marks) and a whole lot more.
Full disclosure: I am one of the founders of Lexim, and thus totally biassed in my view ;).
Cheers,
Michael
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.
Their really controversial patent ('138 - the one that pretty much patented anything that resembled a group of students accessing materials online), was overturned. Although they have a number of technology patents, and are litigious, it isn't stopping competition. There are quite a few out there.
(Full disclosure, I'm one of the founders at http://www.lexim.com.au - one of these companies).
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…
This. attitude. is. the. problem. Why don't you sit down and watch a student deal with this crap for a couple of hours? Anthropologically, empathetically, observe.
> Does your software do these things better?
Our motto was to make med school easier one less click at a time. Do that. Focus on that. All the time. And you'll find what you want, even if you have to hire people to write it. IF you have to hire people, make them hand code the solution for your population from scratch. It's cheaper and better than trying to wrap their heads around the steaming pile of crap that any existing LMS is.
It's not hard. An ical script, a document importer, a quiz module, connect the three with a database. Add LDAP functions so you can interact with the university's authentication system. The database can poop your grade book on demand. If you want a script to do that, I'm sure there are some abused 4th graders who could put it together for you#. A few med students hammered that out over a Christmas break and some 20% time. The rest is just trash.
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#only slightly conflating these two essays:
http://philip.greenspun.com/wtr/dead-trees/53003.htm
http://projects.csail.mit.edu/gsb/old-archive/gsb-archive/gs...
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…
Hi dateembermage, I feel your pain - both in terms of product features as well as the way Blackboard do business, which is exactly why we set about creating an alternative. You might be interested in what we're doing with Lexim ( http://www.lexim.com.au ) - a new take on an old and outdated approach to delivering teaching online. User enjoyment and efficiency are two of the main drivers in our design approach. In my…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi dateembermage, I feel your pain - both in terms of product features as well as the way Blackboard do business, which is exactly why we set about creating an alternative. You might be interested in what we're doing with Lexim ( http://www.lexim.com.au ) - a new take on an old and outdated approach to delivering teaching online. User enjoyment and efficiency are two of the main drivers in our design approach. In my…
Thanks for mentioning your product; I signed up for Convergence using the sign up link at the top of the page. Is that the process to sign up for the trial? It looks as though your page is targeted towards University IT rather than individual professors (which is probably the right approach I suppose) but it makes me suspicious that I can't get the "5 professors, unlimited students" trial on my own.
We think individual teachers should be able to choose the best tools they use for their job, be it technological or otherwise. With this in mind individuals can signup and use Convergence without needing to wait for the institution.
Also worth noting the free plan isn't a trial - you could continue to use the free plan for ever. If you want to expand Convergence across your department or school, and bring in more teachers and courses then you need to upgrade to a paid plan, but for individuals you can use it for free without an expiry.
Thanks for the feedback on the page - we're definitely trying to attract individual educators, not their IT departments, so we'll take a look at how we're expressing that.
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…
Online education is of great interest and importance to me. I started working in this field in 1983, and have had the opportunity to help shape it, study it, and I continue to contribute to the field. I come from the education side, and have written some books on this topic. I have had a company that developed online environments to support learning, and the result was a pretty excellent collaborative learning environment software that 16 years later I still use and which students are pretty positive about. However, my company put our dollars into development rather than marketing, and eventually found that the competition had a crappy product but alot of marketing dollars. So, I wound down the company in 2002. The market was primarily educational institutions, schoolboards, etc and they were buying into the 'lms' solution, where learning is viewed as something to be managed and packaged.
Primarily, I am a prof. and I have been teaching online since 1985: I taught one of the very first totally online courses, and it was based on collaborative learning. In fact, online education in the 1980s was almost all about group learning, team project, knowledge building---whether in secondary or tertiary or training education.
Phew...long lead it. But I provide it as a framework to my message which is that: online education can and has served as a major game changer in education, and is likely the key to the 21st century Knowledge Age.
I don't see much reference to that in this discussion. Most of the comments so far seem to be referencing old paradigm ways of teaching and learning...i.e., lms stuff. None of the software mentioned has achieved great or even mildly interesting or important learning gains. Mainstream elearning software are mostly associated with groans and frustration and anxiety, not excitement at new ways to teach and learn. Moodle is really a muddle, let's be clear. Like BB, Moodle was not designed nor developed for learning or teaching. Education was an add-on to this 1990's moo (aka mud). Educationally, Moodle is just a bunch of things added on without rhyme or reason--anything goes, sort of. BB was initially and largely remains an administrative software. This was not about technologies designed to address learning activities but a slap dash kind of commercial "solution" (the fact that Moodle is open source does not, imho grant it dispensation or holiness). It is making a mess of online education and undermining and distracting the field.
Let's focus on learning, which should and could be really exciting and relevant adventures. About inventing! Innovating! Solving problems! ENgaging in Knowledge communities. Addressing realworld conundra! Let's talk about learning theory. WHat learning methods work best? How can we, educators and technology developers) support 21st century pedagogies and discoveries with new technologies?
The 21st century is a new paradigm and it is about Knowledge building. Our learning approaches and technologies need to support collaboration and knowledge building. That vision can help orient us to new ways of learning, to supporting new paradigm learning pedagogies and strategies.
Let's stop kicking around the 20th century can of learning strategies primarily based on 19th century factory-needs and models (lecture halls, rows of student desks bolted to the floor, obedience, memorization, repetition, etc.). BB and Mooooooodle take us backward. They waste time, money and talent.
Its time to innovate and make a difference, and the world of teachers and learners will thank you for investing your time and energy in designing real solutions.
Cheers, Linda