But, beyond all that, I also have to state that I have never read an EduPunk state that you can’t teach effectively in Blackboard. I am sure there is someone out there that has, but in general – that is not the point. There are a wide range of problems they do discuss, from the user interface of Blackboard being too complicated (I teach a course in Bb, and I have to click 5 times to get to read any assignment submitted by a student) to not liking the idea of everything being hidden behind a password (the walled garden argument).

Somewhere in my office, I do have the propaganda from some conference where Bb was using LMS. They have used a lot of terms (which really serves to confuse more people than help), but LMS is one of them.

I have also spent my time as a facuty support, where I have seen literally hundreds of courses created in WebCt and Blackboard. 95% of them all just do the same passive, industrialized approach of uploading documents, throwing out a discussion question, and then giving a test. Yes, there are all of these other tools and open things in there, but they can’t figure them out (even after we send them through training). They turn to Web2.0 tools, no matter how techno-phobic they are, because those tools are just easier to figure out, more intuitive.

For students who are concerned about losing connections with classmates…There has been at least one recent comparison drawn that if Facebook were run like an LMS, you’d lose all your friends and discussions every 14 weeks. I note that this is a choice by institutions to run their systems in this way. There is no rule or licensing constraint that makes this mandatory (at least for Blackboard). Schools generally don’t pay extra for more courses, but they might incur indirect costs for more server storage/capacity. Usually, this cleansing/purging is a result of an institutional policy stating that the archiving must take place.

For students who are concerned about losing access to content or materials…I hear arguments that students should be able to carry their work forward with them into their lives as a portfolio of their work. I agree, but at the same time I realize that to an extent my digital contributions were trapped in ANGEL back in the day just as to an extent my Google content is trapped inside of Google today. I don’t have records of every conversation I ever had in every class I ever took. Similarly I don’t find that I need these artifacts 8 years later. Because of this, I find this argument against the LMS unreasonable.

Publishers who have that little access code in the back of their textbooks take note, students do not value having to log in multiple times to multiple different sites with multiple user names. It is particularly frustrating when one forgets one of those passwords and the recovery processes are all different. I’d be curious to see the data that backs up the comment “Single sign-on is over rated.” From my 5 years of Blackboard development/consulting experience, I can assert that this is the #1 most popular requested customization that clients implement. Improvements to the custom authentication API framework are in the top 5 that Blackboard developers request.

Gardner, I’m curious to know — if your “Blackboard” class was merely a link that signed a student directly into phpBB (provided that the student could also independently navigate directly to phpBB and log in with the same credentials), how would you feel?

From an instructor standpoint, I understand the argument that there are other tools to support other styles of learning located around the web. I’ve spent many years finding ways to plug such tools into Blackboard. And no – no one ever enters this process with a mindset of “how can I make a teacher’s life more unpleasant and less effective.” Conspiracy enthusiast that I am, there is unfortunately not one to keep the “conventional industrial-model educational processes” in existence. Rather, many of the newer Blackboard plugins and learning apps I’ve seen address precisely the issue of opening doors into the walled garden, to break down barriers and increase participation and collaboration in learning.

From a technology standpoint, what I like about Blackboard’s product is not only is it very pluggable, but it’s also very modular. Back when I worked at Blackboard, I sometimes got the stink eye when I told clients things like “Don’t like Blackboard Community System? Use uPortal.” Similarly, I’ve seen clients swap in Equella or Fedora for Content System, WayPoint for Outcomes System, and Mahara for Portfolio System. Recently, you could even swap Moodle and Sakai in to supplement the Blackboard Learning System.

As John says, Blackboard’s platform is becoming more flexible. Other VLEs like Sakai are becoming much more flexible, too. Indeed, “flexibility” spills over into other areas of life. Did I ever believe a mobile phone could provide 100,000+ different capabilities? No. But what if the LMS could provide a central place for instructors to try out a new learning app or a new pedagogy or teaching philosophy in what you describe as a “controlled environment?” And more importantly, what if this instructor could compare the learning outcomes and course activity of this course verus one taught in a more traditional manner during a previous semester? And what if this data could support research to unlocking the combinations of variables that make learning that much more effective? What if the first time an instructor logged into an LMS it asked them what their teaching style preferences were and which tools they’d like to assemble/provision to teach with? Would the LMS/VLE have more value to you then?

I agree with Martha that UMW, at this point in time, placing a particular system in a “cat bird’s seat” is not appropriate. One must admit that CMS system are expensive (whether in terms of cost from a commercial vendor or in person-hour costs by internal staff supporting an open source solution). The plain fact is that at UMW and probably many other schools, budgets are extremely tight (choice of the word “extreme” was purposeful). Here, we have may profs using the CMS and many who are not. Paying big bucks for a service used by a subset of faculty is problematic.

I’ve seen no study yet that proves to me that the investments our institutions make by purchasing Bb are the best use of resources.

I think this is a important statement that deserves further study. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I have cited evidence about the overall impact of the VLE on education and I can cite studies such as LSU’s which showed that the move to an open source solution was not free but cost neutral (as Michael Feldstein noted from their final report (cost savings to be redirected towards support of Moodle). From this I would conclude that there is end user demand, measurable benefit. Costs for VLE systems appear to be inline with one another as one would expect in a free marketplace. As to the overall return on investment of the underlying technology, this may require further study. Some benefit may not equal an equal benefit to cost. However I would expect given the wide availability of choices and the information available to decision makers that it would be possible to demonstrate a clear ROI for this technology.

I agree that much of the criticism of Blackboard has been centered on business practices. (Don’t get me started.) But not all criticism is about business practices. I know from my own conversations with those interested in instructional technology, that there is a significant sentiment that Blackboard cannot be used to teach effectively. That’s just nuts. Of course there are great classes, effective teaching happening in Blackboard (and in WordPress and in Moodle and in Google Docs and on a plane and on a train).

@John Fontaine: I think Gardner fairly calls you on your attempt to intellectually reposition the LMS as something else, and I find your flabbergasted reaction to his comment over the top… it threatens to take away from the value of your post. As a survey of the landscape of educational technology, it has use. I think your statement about “cost of services” is revealing: it identifies tensions between what IT managers think they can provide and the needs of their communities. You conclude that this has led to a “desire by many purchasers and decision makers to consolidate down to a smaller set of vendors capable of providing a single turnkey service.” I agree. In my experience, these decisions have been too often issued as decrees and not as the product of dialogue, mutual education, and collaboration. The fact of the matter is that Blackboard– the notion of the LMS, actually– is a remnant of a client services model of educational technology, and quite frankly our communities are ready to move beyond that in certain fundamental ways. That is the feeling that has galvanized the edupunk movement and fueled Prof Hacker and experiments across the landscape. Our communities need more, and a single box simply cannot give it to them; if you’re only gonna give us the box, we’ll build ourselves something else. It doesn’t seem to me that the answers for our communities should be dictated solely by the certifications that IT folks have.

I, too, appreciate the dialogue – thank you for hosting it here. I think, though, we’re talking past each other to an extent, due to an elision in your original post and again in your comment between educational institutions and the specific tools in which you are interested – the LMS or, if you wish, institution-sponsored VLE.

I have a strong interest in the survival of educational institutions. My edupunk-ish take is that educational institutions need to embrace a diversity of tools in order to continue to provide a relevant service and thus to survive. I don’t see the LMS as a necessary survival tool in our changing environment.

But it doesn’t have to be useless, either. The more genuinely open and flexible an LMS can be, and the more cost-effective, the more likely it is to find a place in the toolkit. The more rigid and expensive it is, and the more it aspires to monopoly status, to crowd out other tools rather than play well with them, the less relevant it is.

I wouldn’t get too hung up on the specific history of punk and major record labels in this discussion any more than I would in discussing cyberpunk or steampunk. From what I have seen, the DIY ethic is all about getting the job done. And having fun. I don’t know about the possibility of ‘peace’ between edupunks and large commercial software providers. But I can certainly recommend embracing fun as a good strategic posture for everyone involved.