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Instructure Launches To Root Blackboard Out Of Universities

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Re: Instructure Launches To Root Blackboard Out Of Universities

#11

Post by 2arrs2ells »

jcromartie wrote: post #9

Any bets on how long before they are sued by Blackboard?

I asked pg at startup school about doing an edtech startup, and his answer was something like "Well, schools move to slowly to ever get traction, but if you ever did get traction, Blackboard would sue the crap out of you immediately."

(That said, I'm still planning an edtech startup. Best of luck to instructure!)

Re: Instructure Launches To Root Blackboard Out Of Universities

#12

Post by ryankshaw »

jcromartie wrote: post #9

Any bets on how long before they are sued by Blackboard?

actually, ironically enough Desire2Learn, the company who whined about being sued by Blackboard already tried. http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home/51072915-76/utah-contract-... & http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/irony-alert-desire2le...

...until D2L realized how bad they were making themselves look.

Re: Instructure Launches To Root Blackboard Out Of Universities

#15

Post by cambriar »

astral303 wrote: post #14

Blackboard is a terrible piece of software. This should be viewed as a charity mission to rescue students from the ineptitude that is Blackboard.

Agreed. I work tech support here at my university, and the calls received about Blackboard are ridiculous and are always no fun to troubleshoot. I like the company name, 'Instructure', but where does 'Canvas' come into play? Didn't we just see that with 4chan's new shindig?

Re: Instructure Launches To Root Blackboard Out Of Universities

#16

Post by NathanKP »

Smerity wrote: post #2

Every single student at my university would cheer for joy upon hearing this news. Blackboard is as stunted a piece of development as they come and additionally is an incredibly expensive piece of software, especially considering the quality. The user experience is so bad that many course lecturers make their own site or just avoid using websites at all. The only question I have though is how do you pitch it to univer…

I'll hold my cheers until the local college adopts it. I really like the screenshot. Canvas looks very well designed, but I somehow doubt that my college will start using it any time soon.

Re: Instructure Launches To Root Blackboard Out Of Universities

#17

Post by streeter »

2arrs2ells wrote: post #11
jcromartie wrote: post #9

Any bets on how long before they are sued by Blackboard?

I asked pg at startup school about doing an edtech startup, and his answer was something like "Well, schools move to slowly to ever get traction, but if you ever did get traction, Blackboard would sue the crap out of you immediately." (That said, I'm still planning an edtech startup. Best of luck to instructure!)

Does Blackboard have some patents in the space that they leverage when suing? On what grounds do they sue?

Re: Instructure Launches To Root Blackboard Out Of Universities

#19

Post by necubi »

neovive wrote: post #7

Best of luck to them. It's quite difficult to convince faculty to switch over from tools they are comfortable using -- especially porting over their existing lessons and modules. Focusing on the UI is definitely the right approach as Bb is clearly lacking in this space. Regardless, the LMS market is long overdue for a shake up. On another note, many universities already run and contribute to the open source Sakai LMS…

I have a professor who uses Sakai (the university as a whole used Blackboard, but switched to Moodle, another open source option, this year). Sakai may be better than Blackboard, but that's not saying much. The ui is still terrible and it's filled with inconsistent and confusing behaviors. I've no idea what it's like from the instructors perspective, but as a student it's barely usable.

Moodle is about the same as Sakai in this regard, but Blackboard is simply terrible. This is clearly a market that needs to be shaken up, and I hope these guys are the ones to do it.

Re: Instructure Launches To Root Blackboard Out Of Universities

#20

Post by jkkramer »

Smerity wrote: post #2

Every single student at my university would cheer for joy upon hearing this news. Blackboard is as stunted a piece of development as they come and additionally is an incredibly expensive piece of software, especially considering the quality. The user experience is so bad that many course lecturers make their own site or just avoid using websites at all. The only question I have though is how do you pitch it to univer…

Maybe there's a way to rally the students and get them to petition their universities to switch to something better? They pay the bills, after all.
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