Hannah Whaley . com

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.

I was lucky enough to see an advanced screening of ‘State of Play’ this weekend – a new movie with Ben Affleck and Russell Crowe. It was a good movie; not big action or anything but a good conspiracy plot and worth a watch. However, what I thought you might be interested to hear about was the sub-plot about blogging versus newspaper publishing in an internet era.

A theme ran through the whole movie questioning whether publishing a story immediately is the right thing to do. Just because you can publish straight away, should you? Are you doing it justice? Do you have all the facts? Can opinions really be formed that quickly or do they need to settle, be reviewed, slept on and formalised? This made me think about the recent #amazonfail tagging frenzy on twitter, where an outpouring of rage erupted within hours of the apparent removal of books with gay and lesbian references from the search ranks. Amazon have since cited an error as the cause, and much has been blogged about the initial online reaction and the way in which Amazon handled it. It confirms that we don’t yet have answers to the questions raised in the film – did people react too quickly just because they had a forum to do it on? Should they have waited for facts to emerge?

The online world needs to be careful that it does not become stereotyped as a hot bed of overreaction and scare-mongering. There is no benefit in a reputation for being the fastest off the blocks with news if the news always turns out to be over-hyped. That said, we cannot ignore the huge potential that instantaneous opinion gives us. Instead of a battle between print and digital news media, it would be good to see a complementary alliance between the two. Online, opinion can grow and change without fear of reprimand if it is understood that this is the purpose of this media. The printed word by nature is a slower beast, and as such is the perfect medium for measured reflective opinion. Both have value.

Ironically, because I saw the film early I am choosing to post this prior to the general release of the film in the UK. I did wonder if I should wait a while. Anyway, go see the movie – it is food for thought with a few geek jokes scattered around.