The results show that while 72 per cent of respondents used course- management systems such as Blackboard, many did not use any other technology in their academic lives.
What percentage of students will use Blackboard to support their lifelong learning once they’ve graduated?
Blackboard, the learning management system company that has already killed off most of its competition in the commercial learning management system (LMS) market by buying up rivals WebCT and Angel, has announced it is moving into the “synchronous” education arena by buying both Elluminate and Wimba.
Blackboard plans to merge Elluminate and Wimba into a single product to be marketed as “Blackboard Collaborate.”
Not everyone is happy about the move, as evidenced by this discussion thread on LearnCentral, a social network for educators sponsored by Elluminate.
Several Elluminate users cite concerns based on Blackboard’s past behavior, such as dramatically raising the prices for products of other companies it has acquired in the past, and its efforts to squeeze out the LMS competitors it had not already bought out by obtaining a patent for the LMS concept and then suing rivals like Desire2Learn for infringement. (Ironically, Blackboard’s strong arm tactics ultimately resulted in a surge in the popularity of Moodle which, as an open source LMS platform, was perceived as a safe haven by institutions fearing dependence on a company showing monopolistic ambitions.)
Others express concern about the possibility of losing access to content created in Elluminate if license fees for Blackboard Collaborate are significantly higher than current licenses for Elluminate as a standalone product, or if Blackboard changes course and eventually decides to offer Elluminate’s current features only as part of the Blackboard LMS. (While Elluminate has many large schools and universities as customers, it also serves many smaller schools and colleges that either cannot afford Blackboard, have chosen another LMS, or simply do not need or want an LMS at all.)
For its part, Blackboard seems to have anticipated some of these concerns, and attempted to address them in a letter to Elluminate clients announcing the acquisition. That letter, signed by Blackboard’s CEO and President and the current CEOs of Elluminate and Wimba, states:
As excited as we are about the longer term promise of working together in this way, we realize that as clients of Elluminate and Wimba you will naturally be concerned about the short-term impacts of this news. Our pledge to you is to make our first focus sustaining the positive experience that both of these communities currently enjoy. Further, we will also sustain the goal of improving collaboration broadly, rather than exclusively for those using Blackboard learning management products. In that regard, we will continue current Elluminate and Wimba integration work for open source products, and it is our strategy to sustain those bridges with other commercial LMS providers as well.
Has Blackboard truly learned from the public outcry over its past behaviors and grown into a better citizen of the education community more willing to share? Will users of LMS systems other than Blackboard get second-class feature support as Elluminate is absorbed, or will Blackboard’s apparently deep pockets actually benefit users through new and better features coming from a larger development team? Will fear of Blackboard drive Elluminate and Wimba users to shop for alternatives?
Time will tell. Predictions?
