Why Enterprise Software Sucks

Former Blackboarder here with +50 implementations in 4 years.

Blackboard and its main competitors -- specially the best ones -- are extremely focused on building atractive UX to instructors because that is where you find most of the critical success factors for a good implementation and ongoing operations. If you have a well thought implementation and operational model, work for administrators can be reduced to a minimum, specially if they have purchased the "managed hosting" pack.

Back to instructors, they are the ones who need to adopt the platform in the first place and then either conform to the type of online course they will be delivering -- in case it is a cookie cutter model -- or be trained and prepared to create and maintain their own courses. Some institutions still opt for a blended model in which professors have more or less liberty to shape the course to their needs, and that would depend mostly on the program structure.

So what the student ultimately sees and uses is the resulting product of a lot of people working behind the scenes. It's hard to generalize and blame Bb, or admins, or even instructors. Blackboard offers a full set of services for "Adoption", and they are delivered by EDU consultants who know very little about Blackboard Learn, the LMS. They know about EDU processes, student motivation and online learning approaches that are LMS agnostic. With that, instructors could be taking a leading role in driving student UX experience through the platform and learning objects it delivers.

IMHO, enterprise software sucks (to everyone) because it is really large, complex and depends on the dedication of an army of people with different skills and viewpoints. Well, that's the glass half empty. You can also say enterprise software is the coolest thing because it exercises and uses the very best of us all the time, a real tech challenge. That's the glass half full.

Before selecting a tool, professors should always ask: "is this the tool that two recent graduates would choose without my intervention?". Because to use any other tool is to deprive your students of skills they'll likely need.

Also:

> Once profs and students put down the pitchforks, committees will go back to their checklists, and feature creep will resume.

The solution is simple, don't put away the pitchforks. Keep them out until the people choosing the software inform the people that make the budget that that money would be better spent elsewhere.

If the professors don't know what tools those are, spend the money you're saving by not forcing featureful garbage down people's throats on engaging the studentry until the answers are clear.

Like maybe create work-study programs where students who know how to run the kind of boring website the web was designed for are paid to assist teachers in this task.