Moodle for Online Learning

In some local university chapters at Manila, Moodle is in wide use (http://moodle.org/). It’s open source, stable, scalable and constantly under upgrade.

I think it can be a viable alternative to pricey commercial software like blackboard.

Mr. Persuasion, Dr. at Ateneo de Manila, at 10:50 am EDT on August 24, 2007

Aside from the core ethical principles involved and violated by this patent, unfortunately BB is NOT a great system, elegantly designed, with all its parts working reliably and smoothly (think Mac). It is clunky, primitive, unwieldy, and intensely unintuitive (think Microsoft in the 90’s). For example, I’ve had to write down in painstaking detail all the strange steps that have to be taken, in correct sequence, in order to have a student’s grades registered as a letter grade — and this was only possible with intensive tech support. There are theoretically systems in place to make life easier for the user, like having student work vetted by Turnitin, but many of them require the same kind of series of weird steps to implement; if you miss one, or do it wrong, you don’t get a warning. It just doesn’t work, and unless you test it yourself, your students will be up the creek at (say) exam time. And this is without addressing the number of times in a given semester when the entire system is “down” for hours or days, for one reason or another.

Especially with this year’s series of “improvements” (most of which have simply added even more steps to get where you’re going) it has become a monster of dysfunction, and its user manuals are next to useless. So this action very much does remind me of Microsoft in the 90’s — they owned most of the tech world, and repeatedly insisted on owning more and more of it, while their consumers had to struggle with their glitch-ridden, invasion-vulnerable operating systems and were able only with great difficulty (and sometimes legal action) to choose other manufacturers’ software to use with Microsoft. The difference is that back then we could use Macs if we wanted to have a powerful, elegant, smooth, and trouble-free computing/online experience. What this patent does is preclude any “Macs” from designing something that works better, and closes off any incentive for BB to design something clean on its own. For shame.

marya, at 7:50 am EDT on October 27, 2006

Outrageous Hypocrisy

Higher Education profits handsomely from intellectual property, and much of such profit is accomplished by inviting themselves to share in the profits of faculty and more importantly student’s creative genius.

Most of the time institutions do bring value to the table which probably justifies their share of the profit but there are some examples of truly predatory conduct by academia such as the Petr Taborsky case at the University of Southern Florida and the John B Fenn case at Yale which demonstrated gross incompetence, greed, and academic egos leading to great damage to institutions reputations.

And now we have the Blackboard case. I do not think there is any question that Blackboard is a pioneer and leader in this field. All who blaze the trail in new fields are hounded by parasitic organizations that would profit from their work. On one hand there are competitors who steal their property and on the other there are disreputable customers who encourage such infringement. Both are motivated by greed and a lack of ethics.

Academia has generally been far more ethical dealings than many businesses but are not perfect and need to be constantly be reminded when they backslid. This case is a good example of the mob mentality that rationalizes looking others property.

From a public policy perspective intellectual property is the one thing which stands between developed countries high standard of living and a serious decline in that standard. Invention has always fueled our economy. Historically we profited from invention through manufacturing. But globalization is causing much of the manufacturing to be done in low wage countries. For that reason enforcement of our intellectual property rights has become more crucial.

In light of this academia needs to wake up and realize that they cannot take others intellectual property and expect others to respect their own. When you undermine others intellectual property you are undermining the very basis of the economy which supports higher education. A mob mentality does not make thievery any less wrong.

In the end Academia never wins in these situations. When they steal from their students, faculty, or corporations they always pay a high price for their conduct. Those who are victims of such conduct extract retribution over a long time frame and rather you realize it or not many of the most successful inventors become patrons to higher education. We are associated with many of those inventors and we pride ourselves on being Santa’s helpers. When inventors do reach the point of playing Santa they remember the constant reminders they see in our Academic Hall of Shame. Academia never wins the war in these situations.

Ronald J Riley, President — Professional Inventors Alliance — www.PIAUSA.org — RJR"at"PIAUSA.org Exec. Dir. — InventorEd, Inc. — www.InventorEd.org — RJR"at"InvEd.org

Change “at” to @ RJR Direct # (202) 318-1595 Generally available 9 AM to 9 PM ESTMay be availabe plus or minus two hours.

Ronald Riley, President at Professional Inventors Alliance, at 8:55 am EDT on October 27, 2006

NO WONDER EDUCAUSE IS A NON PROFIT

Wow, now EDUCAUSE is the bully.

This letter — an ultimatium to Blackboard — is obsurd on three levels:

1) Educause charter is to not take sides. They are taking sides.

2) Educause Board doesn’t include one corporate member. They are all academic types, or people making easy money at Educause. Not one of them knows the pain of running a company that has to make a profit. If they did, they’d understand the importance of patents. A few of our nations fathers and famed inventors, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Edison, to name two sure did.

3) Educause predicts Blackboard’s patent will hurt the company. Who the hell are they to have a crystal ball? By sending the letter they are waging a negative PR war against one of their members, then sheepishly warning a negative PR war could be coming. It’s double-talk crap. Educause is clearly in cahoots and conspiring against a member, let’s get the junk out of trunk and call a spade a spade -EDUCAUSE is the bully. Shame. Shame. Shame.

Fair Minded 2.0, at 10:46 am EDT on October 27, 2006

Pioneer

Mr. Riley states:

I do not think there is any question that Blackboard is a pioneer and leader in this field.

There seems little question that BlackBoard is NOT a pioneer. That’s a large part of what the controversy is about.

As for Educause — this is BlackBoard’s market speaking. Perhaps they should listen.

Rob Rittenhouse, CS Faculty at McMurry University, at 11:46 am EDT on October 27, 2006

ONLY ONE WAY OUT

What’s done is done and life is not fair, but what is indeed remarkable about the Educause posture is that it, in fact, represents the true sentiment of the higher education industry, including Blackboard’s existing and potential customers, and those who, for the right or wrong reasons, despise Blackboard.

We are a longtime happy customer of Blackboard; we deeply appreciate and benefit from Blackboard’s good technology, services and people, but we also think Blackboard should dismiss the patent and drop the lawsuit.

Blackboard should once again focus on its technology and the outstanding value of their products and services. Compete and succeed on that again, continue being a real market leader, and be poised to deliver sound and real solutions to the future flock of schools who will be disenchanted with the realities and huge monetary and pedagogical costs of running open-source sand castles.

I particularly feel that the Educause letter is 100% accurate in depicting the depth of the institutional anger and how these issues will seriously hurt the company.

Blackboard simply does not understand the depth of the anger: this is not a backslash anymore, or something that they can get out of it with countless conference calls, town hall meetings and Q&A sessions. The only way out is to dismiss the patent and drop the lawsuit; they must cease and desist.

Likewise, there is no doubt in my mind, and in that of most of my many colleagues, who think that Blackboard’s patent royalties would never amount to anything compared to the significant loss of recurring and new business that will hit them in the short-term, but more significantly, two or three years out, when responsible migration and attrition plans are carried out and the mass exodus occurs. Again, the only way out is to cease and desist.

I am sorry to see Blackboard in this predicament. I wish them the best, but I also fault them for giving higher education a major unpleasant and unnecessary distraction and forcing us all to waste countless hours of precious time on this matter.

Still Hopeful, at 2:36 pm EDT on October 27, 2006

Black board has been nothing but a pain for students and teachers here. In fact blackboard seems to go down all the time. There has to be prior art by others to put them to sleep.

rico giove, at 5:10 pm EDT on October 27, 2006

Education is about knowledge. Knowledge doesn’t travel very well if it is locked up and not free (liberated).

Please Blackboard, show you are about knowledge and not greed, free the knowledge so others may be educated with it and grow, indeed, discover more knowledge.

Robert Golding, at 3:55 pm EDT on October 28, 2006

imbedded problems

The major issue with LMS �s is that once adopted, they become imbedded and the cost to change becomes costly in many ways. There are much better LMS �s than BB but they lack one of the critical features, an interface with the administrative system. this means, for many institutions that the academic needs become subverted to the click space matrix of the administrative infrastructure, just as clearly as education is bound by the brick space available.

The BB patent adds to the inertia which limits the choice of the academic to choose the best platform or to adopt an open source flexibility- the rationale behind Linux, Firefox and a host of other open source systems which seem to thrive outside of the traditional brick space patent world.

The other issue, to which most of this is addressed, is the ability to function in BB space. Faculty are notorious for being cyber or digital immigrants, slow to adopt when it diverts from core activities. Thus, they seem more willing to live with and appreciate what is supported by the admin, rather than to deal with a system, protected by patents and service which supports the inertia.

The comments about Lotus and even apple when they closed their system is another critical issue. What saves BB and also what has saved Microsoft, up to this point, has been the imbedded base protected by closed systems. This is about to change in interesting ways.

But, again, the key is that education is a lagging indicator protected, in part, up to this point, by its imbedded nature on which BB builds its market presence and maintainence.

tom abeles, editor at on the horizon, at 3:55 pm EDT on October 28, 2006

I agree with Educause — Blackboard’s patent is bad for higher education and that’s what we’re all about. The listings I’ve seen show loads of prior art — this appears little more than some company’s “strategic thinking” backfiring on them and diverting a lot of good, dedicated people away from their primary mission.

Bob Puffer, Academic Technology at Luther College, at 11:50 am EST on October 30, 2006

Apathy will rule

Let’s face it — nobody is going to really do anything about Bb’s patent. Sorry, but that’s the reality. I’ve yet to see a single institution cancel their contract with Bb over this issue and, frankly, until Bb hurts financially they won’t care. All they need to do is ride out the storm which will blow over in about 6 months at most and then they’re home free.

Apathy rules, at 5:40 pm EST on October 30, 2006

loss of business

Apathy rules says, “I’ve yet to see a single institution cancel their contract with Bb over this issue.” Maybe that’s because institutions are waiting for their existing licenses to run dry before making a move. That is the situation at University of Delaware. We are in the middle of a 3 year license agreement with WebCT, and are in a race against time to identify the best alternative going forward. Will Blackboard even be considered? I can’t say, but we are not looking in their direction at this time. Would that change if the lawsuit were dropped? Again, I can’t say, but it sure wouldn’t hurt.

Becky Kinney, at 8:45 am EST on November 3, 2006

Apathy Rules

In response to the statement that institutionas are not renewing with Blackboard is a bit off base. We have used Blackboard’e entry level product at our small private institution since the introduction of CourseInfo. At the time Blackboard provided the most comprehensive course management and administrative reporting package for the (our) money. Unfortunately, with each passing year the maintenance fee increased yet some of the features normally included were quietly removed and shifted to the next higher level product. At this point we are now in a situation where our Basic 6 edition is no longer supported, Basic 7 is on the schedule for end of life, and upgrading is a definite financial hardship. We are definitely looking for an alternative. As I continue to research alternatives, I am finding that several MAJOR Universities are NOT renewing with Blackboard. Some are going with open source as well as Desire2Learn. Despite the ease of using Blackboard, it practically runs itself when properly installed, I like many others have reached our limits on being nickeled and dimed for the sake of. It also appears that special packaging and pricing is an being offered in an attempt to maintain current subscribers of their basic package. Even this appears to come on the heels of the recent pricing release at Desire2Learn. The truth is that none of their products are complete packages. In order to truly experience the “bells and whistles” being marketed, institutions need to “extend Blackboard” by buying another product (Blackboard’s or a partner’s) or develop new ones via their “Building Blocks". I suspect that by mid year, Blackboard’s reduced market share of US higher education institutions will become evident. They may remain financially stable due to new K-12 and overseas clients.

Jan, at 12:30 pm EDT on April 4, 2007