Cooper-Taylor Training

It’s been some while since I administered a Blackboard system, 2002 to be exact, but if this post from Ben Eison is anything to go by things have not changed a deal in the last seven years.

One of the things that frustrated me was Blackboard’s poor support. It wasn’t that the support staff were poor, rather that there weren’t enough of them and they were over in the states when I was in the UK. Every Bb user group meeting harped on about this fact. From what Ben’s post says things haven’t improved in this area. Bb used to tell us they were playing catch up as they were a victim of their own success. Fair enough, but after seven years you’d think they could have the support staff to customer ration right by now.

Other gripes noted in Ben’s post included, bugs that don’t get fixed, and lack of training materials.

The comments make interesting reading, so make sure you read those too.

Some comments point to open source as a solution and I couldn’t agree more. I am a fan of Moodle but there are lots of other OS solutions out there, Sakai and LAMS come instantly to mind.

Having put both Blackboard and Moodle into university campuses, I can honestly say Moodle will give you less headaches.

Image: Mike Le Sombre