“Leading educational technology vendor Blackboard Inc. unveiled its first integrated instant-messaging service April 2 for students and professors who rely on class web portals for lectures, assignments, exams, and grades.”
On April 2, 2009, Blackboard finally released its long-awaited IM service, powered by Wimba. At first, this was going to be powered by Bantu (2001), but this became “long-awaited” because it was later changed to Wimba’s Collaboration Suite. The issue this educator & user of Blackboard raises is whether “Blackboard IM/Collaboration” is ”needed” as a feature and in what capacity does Blackboard think that this feature would be used?
Blackboard is primarily an LMS, that is moving away from being an LMS, and is moving towards being something else, a system for learning through; rather than a system for managing your learning as provided by the school in a “school setting”. Due to this evolution, I’ll pose 3 questions: 1) What purpose does an LMS serve within the classroom? 2) What purpose does an LMS serve beyond the classroom? and 3) With integrated realtime features, what role does Blackboard wish to have with it’s IM?
Some of the answers to Blackboard’s goal with its evolution into an learning system–rather than primarily an LMS–can be found in their eLearning 2.0 goals. Roughly summizing, Blackboard’s goals are:
- “Extending the platform: e-Learning 2.0 is about personalizing the e-Learning environment to be more discipline and pedagogically specific to the educational activity at hand. This more tailored platform experience can be achieved through specialized software extensions developed by and for educators (Global Learning Objects Catalogue), as well as with rich, interactive digital resources.
- Facilitate Social Networking: e-Learning 2.0 is about enabling a social experience that recognizes the course is but one social-organizational group in a broader education environment. To help foster academically oriented relationships outside of the class environment, Blackboard announces plans to connect students and faculty across disciplines and across institutions through a new Scholar.com Web service.
- Enable Lifelong Learning: e-Learning 2.0 is about integrating the educational journey students take from elementary school to higher education to the workplace.
- Create Network Learning Environments: e-Learning 2.0 is about moving beyond the course towards a more holistic conception of a networked learning environment.
The Issues?!?
Simply, while these goals are all good, Blackboard functions as a subscription service to Educational Institutions. What educational institutions allow placed on the system is the property of the educational institution. To allow sharing of information without accounting for copyrights of the material is simply… copyright infringment.
Second, due to Blackboard being a service that schools PAY for, how will they meet goal #3, without charging money also to the student user at some point in their usage?
Third, the social network as learning environment is both a fad and a very effective tool if harnessed properly. Blackboard is generally regarded as a “necessary evil” by student users who find it cumbersome and frustrating to navigate the many screens to find that 1 thing needed for class. Very simply for Blackboard to become a social force for learning, they would have to take some lessons from the “facebooks” of the world; which would mean fundamentally scraping just about everything that makes Blackboard, Blackboard (an LMS).
As an Educator, or a Student, or a former user of Blackboard… What do you think about the changes the company is making in their system? Will it help students? Will students utilize it? Will students use it as a social thing in class (distraction) or out of class? Or, will students stick to the Facebooks of the world which do this sort of environment that much better?
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Great article. As a student I've used sakai, WebCT, and blackboard. When I was used it as a student sakai was intrinsically clunky and hard to navigate, but it has since evolved and when I had to use it while TAing a course it had become closer to the familiar blackboard/WebCT layout and navigating it as my students would became easier.
Having used a lot of these, I can honestly say that if a student has a hard time navigating these sites it is either a) the student's own internet illiteracy or b) the instructor's internet or design illiteracy, but not the site's problem. I have had to use these sites run by teachers who wanted to make a new page for every assignment and never named assignments in a consistent fashion, and those were the worst (after that first semester of sakai). More computer-savvy professors can arrange a course on these sites that is relatively intuitive for any regular computer-user. As a student I've never regarded them as a "necessary evil" – I've always been grateful for an easy location of grades, handouts, and assignments.
Having experienced a blackboard/WebCT training course as an instructor, though, I can understand why some instructors make such clunky websites – the course focused more on "online learning" and how we should respond to e-mails in a timely fashion (duh?) or make sure our powerpoints are ready for upload. Absolutely no time was spent discussing the flow and presentation of the website in order to make it easier for students to use. I still remembered what the good professors I had had done it and just copied them, but some older teachers who haven't taken classes online don't have that experience.
I am excited about the new im feature – I used to have my students contact me via an AIM name I made specifically for students, having one provided to me that the students might get used to using would be great!