Hannah Whaley . com

The year is starting with the UK Blackboard Users Conference in Durham this week. One of the presentations I am giving is looking at change in the elearning field, what can be attributed to the release of Blackboard 9, and what institutions can learn from this period of change. Here is the abstract for my presentation:

During the last eight years there have been rapid development in pedagogies for online learning and the underlying technical systems to support these pedagogies. These systems have matured to form a next level environment, encapsulated in systems like Blackboard 9, and the expectations for Moodle 2.0. These platforms have looked to bring the technologies implemented up-to-date (look and feel, underlying code, standards compliance) and to provide a sound platform to build on in the future.

However, the move to Blackboard 9 has been demanding for many institutions in many ways - bugs, stability and performance, staff training, staff engagement and expectation management to name but a few areas. These experiences have highlighted the significant issues that this change process is raising for our field, and fuelled concerns that central VLEs should be making way for more agile socially driven solutions. As many institutions are at the point of deciding what direction they believe will provide that next generation experience that we are all aiming for, there is value in discussing the extended issues they may face:

• Do we want the change we say we do?
• Are we capable of moving large scale VLEs forward?
• Are jumps away easier than jumps forward?
• How do we focus attention on learning and teaching and not the underlying technology?
• How can we manage expectations and change processes?
• Is our understanding of the elearning infrastructure at institutions the same as our users?

This talk will refer to the University of Dundee as a case study example, but will be discussing the broader conceptual and strategic direction of the field at this time. Discussion welcome.

I gave a presentation at the recent Blackboard World Conference (#bbworld09) in Washington DC on ‘Groupwork Assessment’. The powerpoint for this presentation is available on the Blackboard Connections site. The talk was videoed by the 360 people, and you can watch the video here. Thanks to everyone that turned up - and asked questions and spoke to me at the end. The feedback was all positive, and appeared to highlight the genuine requirement for a system of this kind to be more widely available within Blackboard. The rise in group teaching and assessment, and the issues students face with it, appear to be consistent across disciplines, year groups, institutions and continents.

The ability to work effectively in a team is seen as a crucial skill within many professions and industry sectors. There has been a rise in the use of assessed group work in many disciplines over recent years. There are numerous reasons for this increase, including larger class sizes (therefore making it efficient to have group submissions) and a greater emphasis on employability and transferable skills.

Despite this rapid progression, methods for assessing the individual contributions of team members have not advanced significantly causing a feeling of dissatisfaction amongst many students. Faculty are also concerned about the possibility of students gaining high marks because of their team’s effort, when the individual contribution was unsatisfactory.

An approach to collaboration has been developed that teaches about team work by focusing on assessment criteria and peer evaluation aspects of group working. As the amount of group work that students complete continues to increase, enhancing their learning in this area helps them achieve more from project work and benefit from collaborative learning approaches. By ensuring fairer grading for individual contributions to groups, students are less stressed by the challenges of team working and are better able to focus simultaneously on the project deliverable and team interactions.

Just last week Blackboard announced that they have bought Angel Learning. I thought it might be useful to pull together some of the information and opinion that I have observed online since this announcement.

First the info. Blackboard have been through the mill once before with a high profile acquisition, and while Angel is not as high profile as WebCT was in terms of client numbers it still represents a leading competitor at this time. Announcements came through thick and fast from Blackboard, and you can read them here:

• Michael Chasen’s twitter account, closely followed with retweets from other well known Bb twitterers, and complete with its own hashtag of #bbplusangel
• Blackboard blog posts
• Blackboard press release
• Dedicated section on Blackboard Website
• Michael Chasen on Fox Business News

Early reaction included lots of retweets, and news of a 10% drop in Bb’s shares (Nasdaq BBBB) - this was later accredited to lower guidance and a downgrade on the day. Subsequent twitter reaction seemed to show disappointment from Angel clients, and approval from Blackboard clients. The news that Ray Henderson (the No.2 at Angel Learning) was now to become head of Blackboard Learn seemed to help even out the opinion.

From what I have read, I have seen three main themes for community concern and opinion - collated here with example blog posts to reflect them:

1. Can you escape the gravitational pull of Blackboard? Many felt they had made repeated decisions against Blackboard, by buying WebCT and then Angel, yet seem to be pulled back to being Blackboard clients without actively making that decision.

• Angelic Learning Online

2. Have enough lessons been learnt? Many of the statements of optimism from this acqusition seemed to reflect similar statements given at the time of the WebCT merger.

• Three tests for the ‘new’ Blackboard 

3. Can Blackboard ever have a good guy reputation? Many feel that Blackboard’s reputation is going from bad to worse, following the WebCT merger, D2L lawsuits and now this latest acqusition of a main competitor.

•  A corpse for Blackboard’s corpulence
• Inside Higher Ed

It is important to remember that Blackboard are a business. Not a charity, not an educational establishment, not a government funded body. They are a company, and if they don’t do business right then they will cease to be a company, and the time and money invested in them by institutions will amount to nothing.  Somebody has to be a leader in a marketplace, and that fact alone does not make them evil or dangerous. A lack of innovation or  monopolising while stagnating would do. In the time I’ve worked on Bb systems they have continuously taken significant steps forward, and that is important to me. Interesting that the anger is always directed to Blackboard who appear committed to offering educational products rather than the companies that sold out their customers. Perhaps its just easier to aim at the ones that are still around.

Also, they are a really young company. A big company, but still young and still learning. We all work to promote learning in individuals so why are we so unforgiving of businesses that are learning? Maybe they have learnt nothing at all from the WebCT merger, but I don’t believe that could be the case. However, learning is not enough alone, and they must act on what they have learnt. I hope they do, as it could benefit many institutions. I’m possibly too optimistic, but I feel that a focus on the negatives helps no-one. There will be opportunities to come from bbplusangel - perhaps people should focus on providing a strong community voice to guide them.