

Instructure Launches To Root Blackboard Out Of Universities - abraham
http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/31/instructure-blackboard-universities-coates/

======
Smerity
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 universities when the people who suffer under the product
usually aren't the ones making the purchasing decision?

~~~
russell_h
As part of the deal, include "training" for those making the decisions, and
make sure they know its at a nice resort in <insert seasonal vacation
destination>.

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blocke
As someone who was suckered in Blackboard backend administration and still
haven't managed to get free I decided to give this a spin.

This is my impression after 30 minutes of fumbling with it:

The look for end-users is clean and feels great. Way better than Blackboard
for end-users. Canvas seems to promote a more self-service adhoc approach
which would be attractive for small installs.

Unfortunately the admin interface seems non-existant.

How do I sanely create and populate thousands of courses?

User admin tools are primitive. Where is the ability for the administrator to
change a users password? How can I see what classes they are enrolled in, what
their roles are, etc? Can the administrator globally disable a user for non-
payment without deleting?

How do faculty roll the content from one course into multiple sections and
then roll that content over to a new course next semester? No anti-cheat
integration?

Anyway those are the concerns I was able to find in the first 30 minutes.

It looks undeployable here which is a shame. Here is to hoping it gets better
soon.

Edit: I just spotted the course copy functionality. Scratch that one off the
list. Still not impressed with the central admin tools exposed in the UI. Our
faculty would prefer not having to populate the user lists in their courses,
etc.

Edit 2: Thought I'd be done playing with it but not yet. I can't get over how
awesome the end-user UI is. As I just sent off to a co-worker: "The end-user
UI is stupendously good compared to Blackboard. Stunningly good in comparison.
It's like taking the best of Facebook and turning it into an LMS. Hide this
from users."

Definitely has my interest.

~~~
devlindaley
Devlin from Instructure here. It's great when someone actually takes the time
to dig into the application and give some real feedback. Thank you.

From the sound of things I think you are using one of our free-for-teachers
accounts, which gives you complete control over a course and not to the
administrative tools that an admin would have. This is why it feels self-
service and adhoc for small installs, because it is :)

We can integrate with a variety of SIS systems in batch/real-time for auto-
populating thousands of courses. You can integrate with auth systems like LDAP
and SAML too. We have features for migrating content from other vendors and
also from semester to semester.

I'm happy to chat on the phone, answer questions here or you can set something
up by emailing me devlin@instructure.com .

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hugh3
OK, despite having read the article, the thread, and working for a major US
university, I still have no clue what this Blackboard thing does, or what
_LMS_ stands for (though I have learned that everybody hates Blackboard). Can
someone explain what class of product we're discussing?

~~~
dustineichler
LMS = Learning Management System

Blackboard hurts Universities because it's overly expensive and unintuitive
for the price.

This new site looks great. I worked on <http://moodle.org/> back in the day
which is a great opensource alternative. It's now deployed in most if not all
California State Universities. This is a great space to work in.

~~~
spoondan
_It's now deployed in most if not all California State Universities._

Most of the CSU campuses are still using Blackboard. MOODLE is used by around
6 of the 23 campuses and is being piloted by a few others.

~~~
dustineichler
this article says different.

[http://campustechnology.com/articles/2008/11/csu-system-
adop...](http://campustechnology.com/articles/2008/11/csu-system-adopts-
moodle-lms-services.aspx)

although I think <http://www.moodlerooms.com/> is slightly different.

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neovive
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. It's a Java-based LMS developed and maintained by a
consortium of universities. A small to mid-size university can get it running
very quickly as a pilot on 1 or 2 servers using Tomcat and MySQL. It's easy to
customize and it integrates seamlessly with existing university portals via
CAS. Throw in a SAN for user files and it's a very powerful, scalable and low-
cost LMS option that is much more usable than Bb.

~~~
necubi
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.

~~~
neovive
I agree that there are some UI issues in Sakai. I particularly dislike how the
back button does not work as expected due to the way the sessions are
maintained. However, with the source being available, it is only a matter of
time before improvements are made.

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

~~~
2arrs2ells
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!)

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

~~~
patrickyeon
Yes, an analysis here: <http://mfeldstein.com/blackboard_patents_the_lms/> The
executive summary is "any groupware that involves student interaction."

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sp332
My college uses Blackboard. Well, "uses" is a strong word... We have
Blackboard installed on the intranet, students generally avoid using it.

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sp332
I though Moodle was already doing that? <http://moodle.org/> Although, they
probably don't have a Tank Destroyer, or even one flamethrower :-)

~~~
jacques_chester
We should buy them one and send them to Blackboard HQ.

edit: I should probably disclose that my employer uses Blackboard and my
brother-in-law sells moodle services.

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fido
I think any serious competitor is going to have a hard time since Blackboard
has been known to sue on their ridiculous patents... their legal history is
sickening...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard_Inc>.

and

<http://www.downes.ca/blackboard_patent.htm>

~~~
adammichaelc
From getting to know the guys at Instructure over the years I'm sure they have
considered everything that might be coming down the pipe. If anybody can
navigate the waters and succeed competing with Blackboard, it's them.

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julianz
It'll be welcome. It's a long time since Blackboard was the thing that
actually saved us from <shudder> Lotus LearningSpace.

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Turing_Machine
I wish them well! There's definitely room for innovation in this space.

One thing that bothers me, though (and this is based on a quick run-through of
their demo, so I'm prepared to be set straight if this is not correct):

It looks like they've made the same mistake as Blackboard, WebCT, etc. by
making resource type (files, assignments, discussion forums, etc.) the primary
organizational method rather than organizing by instructional unit.

It may make good sense from a programming perspective to put all the
discussion forums together, all the downloadable files together, all the
external web links together, but that's not the mental model that teachers
use. To a teacher teaching (e.g.) American history, the PDF of the Gettysburg
Address and the PDF of the Declaration of Independence don't "go together".
Instead, the Gettysburg Address "goes together" with the discussion forum on
the American Civil War and the link to the National Park Service page on the
Battle of Gettysburg.

Most teachers would prefer to build the Civil War unit in one place, rather
than clicking back and forth between the file section and the discussion forum
section and whatnot.

Canvas does have a "Module" type that lets you do this, more or less, but it's
not the primary schema for organization.

If they want this system to have maximum comprehensibility and usability for
teachers and students alike, I'd recommend that they promote their Modules to
the top level, and make them the primary organizational method for the system.

Moodle gets this right -- few of the others do. When you start a new Moodle
course, you see a list of weeks (or topics) to which you can then add files,
discussion forums, web links...on an ad hoc basis. While you CAN click on
links in Moodle to see all the files in one place, all the assignments in one
place, and so on, in practice no one ever does that (except maybe at the
beginning of the semester when the students click on the assignments link to
make a note of all the due dates).

You don't have to copy Moodle slavishly, but _please_ don't copy the
organizational schemas of Blackboard and WebCT. They just plain suck.

------
astral303
Blackboard is a terrible piece of software. This should be viewed as a charity
mission to rescue students from the ineptitude that is Blackboard.

~~~
cambriar
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?

~~~
guynamedloren
I was wondering the same thing, and also made the mental connection with the
4chan Canvas earlier today. Can anybody clear this up?

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emilam
My school has been primarily blackboard, but some of my classes were actually
ported to canvas at the beginning of the spring term. I have to say canvas is
a lot friendlier and actually a joy to use. I dont know if its how my school
has Blackboard signed up, but just the fact that I stay authenticated for
longer than 10 minutes is a nice step up.

Most of the papers teachers post open up using scribd which is so much easier
than dealing with a docx file or pdf.

I think Instructure is taking a step in the right direction, and I hope they
can make through all of the crap Blackboard and Universities will give them.

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rgrieselhuber
I hope they are successful.

Not sure I would have used the slide about Napoleon's march into Russia
though.

~~~
DevX101
Yeah, I didn't get that either. It seemed to imply that Instructure was about
to get their ass handed to them as Napoleon did on his ill fated venture.
Seemed contrary to the tone of his post supporting the startup.

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netmau5
We need more things called canvas. At least this one looks more useful than
the last one.

------
expressive
This quote is from the Technology page on the instructure.com website, "In the
1990’s it was Java and in the 2000’s it was PHP and .NET. The platform for Web
2.0 and beyond is Ruby."

Is PHP really considered old technology? FaceBook and a ton of other new and
relatively new startups, including fflick.com use PHP. I am working on a
startup and I certainly want to stay ahead of the curve with the latest
technology; I have decided on PHP—because I am most proficient with this over
the others. I know Ruby is like the hot, new girl right now, but that does not
necessarily make PHP and Java old technologies. Am I wrong? Must I go after
the hot new girl to keep my mojo?

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pauljonas
Godspeed.

Blackboard is an abomination.

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turbofail
For my computer architecture class at Berkeley, they decided to give Bb a try.
It lasted about three weeks before they gave up and reverted to the tried and
true command-line scripts for submitting assignments and viewing grades.
Hopefully canvas will fare a little better.

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healtheconomics
<https://www.piazzza.com/> a free alternative, that I think is here to improve
in class discussion. hell with blackboard?

~~~
ssankar
Over 1/2 of students at Stanford use Piazzza and they are rapidly spreading
throughout MIT, Harvard, Princeton, and many more campuses.

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fuzail
The program makes sense, if they have a decent approach to the university
admins and get a following, I see them expanding fairly quickly.

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hsmyers
The flame thrower is his, but how about the operator? Double hit points if she
is also the M-18 operator...

------
quizbiz
How expensive _is_ Blackboard?

