Blackboard is an academic tool, used by hundreds of educational establishments worldwide. It is a highly adaptable, extensible database back-end and web interface front-end.
On paper it is quite simply phenomenal, in practice however I suspect it’s the worst ‘web-app’ designed by man. Hit the link to find out why.
Lets start with the basics; it often doesn’t work. Below is a table of some major features supported by Blackboard, and if that feature has failed during my use of it:
| Feature: | Failed when I’ve tried to use it?: |
| Assessments and Surveys (Online tests). | Yes, on three completely independent tests over the last 2 years. |
| Grade centre (Online grade database). | No. |
| Content management. | Yes, file uploader failed with a meaningless error message. Friends have also experience corrupted uploads that offer no warning. The content interface is useless owing to its convoluted nature. |
| 24/7 coursework and services. | Yes, Blackboard is a site with terrible uptime statistics at The University of Reading. Maybe other institutions have more stable versions? |
| Collaboration and sharing. | Yes, group E-Mails sent by lecturers have frequently failed to arrive. And again, the interface is so unusable that many lecturers refuse to share content using the Blackboard site. |
| Mobile phone integration. | No. But then I’ve not used it! |
Now excuse my presumption, but I think you’d have to agree the above table is a pretty good display, of fairly poor performance. If you happen to be a fairly (or even vaguely) web-ducated person, you’ll notice that most of the above tasks are fairly simple to achieve. Hrm, a website that provides 24/7 services… yea, excuse me while I remain not blown away.
A second gripe of mine is the interface in general. To the web-savvy amongst you, I can be succinct; Blackboard uses frames. To the non web-savvy, I can still be fairly succinct; Blackboard employs a layout technique that good websites did away with 10 years or more ago.
Navigating a Blackboard page is tortuous, Blackboard offers customisation options that can make a static page look like c**p. And where my mind boggles, is that some poor coder had to provide this extensibility. I’d rather the file upload utility worked before you start giving me the option to make all buttons bright orange!
My third and final issue with Blackboard is this; much much better alternatives exist. I use a web-based, collaborative, management system featuring online document editing (not a Blackboard feature) and full timetabling support that can integrate with any major calendar application. Oh, and the website even works 24/7 (a rarity, I know). The name of this all-singing, all-dancing, quite fantastic tool is Huddle. And I cannot recommend it enough.
Having recently announced their growing Microsoft Office integration, Huddle is a web-app that’s going places… fast. The online editing facility can alter .doc and .xls files without a download being required. Audit trails are automatically established for all file transactions, a sample of a trail is pictured below;
Sample audit trail from Huddle (click image to enlarge)
Is Huddle the end of Blackboard? I sadly can’t say so, the grade database of Blackboard is a feature that Huddle lacks, and it’s undeniably a vital one. Though having seen how online document management can be done, it makes one shudder upon returning to the Blackboard environment.
I welcome your comments below, especially if your Blackboard experience is diametrically opposed to mine.
Chris
I agree with you views on BB. Very c**p. I am using Backpack for Content Management – the Content Management facilty on BB seems very cumbersome, and I don’t feel confident about it. Huddle looks interesting …
Currently some undergraduates are getting confused about drop boxes and dedicated assignment submission facility on BB – some lecturers say use the Drop Box, some say use the assignment facility. This seems to be due to BB not working consistently.
Also, lecturers tend to be variable in their use of BB. That puts off undergrads I think.
And I agree, BB just looks plain clunky with its use of frames.
I have some more general problems with BB or with anything that might replace it. It’s probably more to do with my general gripes about the universities work. BB acts as a conduit for lecturers’ module habdouts, powerpoints etc, and for electronic submission of coursework, but a university social network could be *so* much more. There are facilities for thread-based discussions on BB, but I do not know of any modules where these have been used to get real discussion going on.
People use Facebook because they can create content and have a feeling that they own it in some way, that it is theirs,(it isn’t but that’s another matter), but BB is the university’s software and students don’t have that sense of ownership.