Blackboard, Inc. (BBBB)

Aggiemedic01 (< 20) Submitted: 8/01/07 11:26 AM

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Your university is debating switching from BBBB a 100K fee? Admittedly, I'm associated with a rather large university, but I can't imagine managing a full fledged course management system without hiring at least one full time IT staff member to maintain the system. A good IT staff member will cost 40-55K base salary, plus benefits and overhead. That will likely run much more than 100K. The key question is total cost of ownership, and the "huge" fees that you can save by not paying for an open source product often pale in comparison the the addition staff required to install and maintain them.

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captainscurvy (61.32) Submitted: 8/18/07 8:03 PM

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While Moodle software itself may be free, a modest amount of looking into their product and website will quickly reveal actually adopting and using Moodle is not. It turns out that the actual software itself is the only thing that is free, while hosting, tech support, consulting, installation, integration, etc. are NOT free. With just a bit of research it becomes apparent Moodle is hardly the "bargain" it appears at first glance. More likely than not I would suspect most institutions who switched to Moodle would quickly realize what a huge mistake they had made.

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eldetorre (67.31) Submitted: 1/07/08 5:27 PM

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Both respondents make the ludicrous assumption that a Blackboard solution requires no staffing resources ( at the very least there will need to be a dedicated BB liaison) and that a dedicated IT person will be required for a Moodle or other open source solution. What utter BS! Any modern institution has an IT staff. Moodle is ridiculously easy to manage.

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tazeat (95.16) Submitted: 2/20/08 5:09 AM

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Actually I attend the University of Washington Tacoma, and I see most all my classes using Blackboard while recently a lot of the CSS department and more "techy" classes have switched over to the moodle server. At a university like mine web servers are easy to come by, there are servers for everything I see the switch very welcome... The moodle server has worked great and actually has had much more user interaction (techy classes have techy students?) on forums working together on the assignments, asking for help, and openly asking teachers questions that will help everyone (even the night before assignments are due), while I have yet to see anybody touch the discussion board on the blackboard website. I'm sure this varies from place to place, but this is just what I have seen.

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eldetorre (67.31) Submitted: 2/27/08 8:25 PM

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Actually you will find that it is quite consistent from place to place. Only technically challenged admins like Blackboard. End users and technically savvy people prefer any of the open source alternatives, (moodle sakai etc.) not just because they are free, but because they are BETTER!

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brizzlekizzle (37.37) Submitted: 3/26/08 5:41 AM

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Yes, also this link, http://www.humboldt.edu/~jdv1/moodle/all.htm

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agreenhat (25.72) Submitted: 4/03/08 10:37 PM

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I can see Moodle eventually having an impact on Blackboard's near ubiquity, but I don't believe many universities will switch over yet to really affect the market price. Those that are switching over, or considering switching over, will likely -- and this is a total assumption -- do it gradually as many of their staff and students are used to blackboard already.

Though really, switching it in the summer and having people relearn a similar program wouldn't be too hard; I just think -- assume -- it's not going to be fast enough as to warrant selling blackboard short or buying it for a semi-longterm investment (~year?).

This is, for the most part, speculative; I do however attend a university with blackboard. I don't personally care for blackboard and am intrigued at this alternative. I'd never heard of it until know and I think most people haven't either. (since they seem mostly similar, the question is if the 100k is significant; right?).

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EnglishTeach (67.41) Submitted: 4/07/08 2:54 PM

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We ll, I haven't been on CAPs much lately, so it' a year or so since I posted this. ...thought I would add a couple of clarifications.


1) Almost all universities are moving toward a freshmen-friendly campus and are opening "Student Success" offices, adding staff to advise, administer programs, etc. The university that I used in my entry above used one of those staff to work on Moodle during her "down time" an entire year before adapting. She was NOT tech savvy, just a persistent freshman advisor who adapted Moodle for the entire campus (approx 9000 students).
My point? It doesn't take the IT dept or CINS or CS (which most campuses have) to ready Moodle for an entire campus.


2. More and more departments are hiring or paying stipends for tech-savvy instructors/professors. An English dept. that I know of pays a stipend plus a course load reduction for his technical expertise for departmental computers (main office, faculty computers, and the department's server). Even beyond that, some students are so tech-savvy that they are hired as quasi-IT specialists. (Even using student worker financial aid funds)
My point here: There is rarely a lack of IT talent on college campuses.


3. Is software ever a good investment? I guess I would feel differently if Blackboard were moving into other areas. But is it not a one trick pony? Software ages too quickly.

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