Anaheim, Calif.—Blackboard announced today that it is teaming up with a for-profit education provider, K12 Inc., to sell online courses to colleges that want to outsource their remedial offerings.
The companies say their plan will offer a new way for students who lack basic skills to get caught up. Blackboard would sell online courses that are designed and taught by employees of K12. The courses would be delivered on the Blackboard course-management system. It is the first time that the company has sold full courses, rather than just software to deliver them.
Exactly what courses will be offered and other details have not yet been decided, and officials say they are in the earliest stages of designing the actual product.
“We’re putting together a focus group of existing community college e-learning thinkers and deans and provosts who are very interested in solving this issue, and we’re going to work with them to figure out what this offering is,” said Matthew Small, Blackboard’s chief business officer, in an interview.
He said he hoped that the online courses would be available by next fall.
Katherine Boswell, director of community college policy for the Center for Education Policy and Practice, said she welcomes the new offering, as she would any new attempt to address the problem of improving remedial offerings.
“For so long we’ve been embarrassed about” how many students need remediation, she said. “We don’t like to talk about it.”
16 Responses to Blackboard to Sell Online Courses Through New Partnership
peter_murray - October 14, 2010 at 9:48 am
/Very/ interesting. This is arguably a Christensen-inspired disruptive path. Create a product that takes the unwanted consumers from market incumbents. Establish a tight vertical market where you can add value. Then deliberately move “up-market” ant start to take other low-margin consumers from incumbents. Will we see Blackboard teaming up with for-profit education companies to offer associates and bachelor degrees next?
drabv - October 14, 2010 at 12:08 pm
If the courses are effective, they will be of interest to 4 year colleges who have learners with dev ed/remedial needs. Publishers like Pearson will still be a competitor with products that can be used under the oversight of a given institution though. Without an institution, there’s the barrier for use of financial aid.
roseoffner - October 14, 2010 at 4:49 pm
As a post graduate student I recently finished a certificate in online teaching and learning.In April I read that Blackboard owned the copyrights to all the work that we had created and posted in our course. This means that our intellectual property and curriculum design was in the process of being hijacked, and it was disconcerting to say the least. At that time I did put the copyright logo on my course work since it is my hope that I will use that syllabus and course design when I am employed.
I understand that it is the information age but I still want to maintain ownership and copyrights to my course design.
My question is were all Universities cognizant of there plans and the fact that they own everything we put on Blackboard?
My second question would be shouldn’t instructors and students be informed of this in advance?
Very interesting indeed.
R. Offner
11186108 - October 14, 2010 at 9:16 pm
roseoffner – “I read that Blackboard owned the copyrights to all the work that we had created and posted in our course.”
Are you sure of that? I haven’t heard that this is so.
jrstraussb1 - October 15, 2010 at 6:21 am
I
jrstraussb1 - October 15, 2010 at 6:28 am
roseoffner – “I read that Blackboard owned the copyrights to all the work that we had created and posted in our course.”
As per the message above, ARE YOU SURE OF THAT??
Does that include curriculum developed by faciltators of online courses on blackboard?
agusti - October 15, 2010 at 10:49 am
As if we needed more proof that Blackboard is yet another evil empire. Had we never let Blackboard in the door so enthusiastically years ago when it proposed to sell us its wildly overpriced digital filing cabinet service (most recently dubbed BB9), and let it establish a near total lock on the market, would it be in a position to start doing what we do, offering courses? Beware of Trojan horses.
archman - October 15, 2010 at 11:15 am
Wow, this is truly brilliant. I can only admire the Blackboard people that thought this up.
What they have managed to do is basically find a way to seamlessly embed their “virtual for-profit Blackboard University” inside another university. The previous remark about a trojan horse is entirely accurate.
For universities that actually accept this, I will watch with a fascinated horror to see what transpires. Will students co-enroll at their Blackboard University? Will BB University charge massively overpriced tuition (like most corporate for-profits? Will faculty at the target universities be slowly replaced with cheap adjunct slaves or canned curriculum, courtesy of BB University? Will target universities require additional admin-bloat and costs to monitor, assess, and administrate students taking BB University courses? Will target university faculty have to dedicate service hours advising on BB University options, screening curricula, etc?
I will wager that Blackboard will also offer universities steep “discounts” to universities that allow them to set up their BB University courses. Clueless university administrators will proclaim “What a Great Bargain!” to the near-universal disgust of faculty.
Professors whose universities are dependent on Blackboard, please prepare yourselves for the corporate assault on education at your particular institution. It will be like nothing you have seen before.
pnaegele - October 15, 2010 at 12:10 pm
Interesting….there are FREE programs for high schools through K12.com now…will those be going away?
http://www.k12.com/schools-programs/online-public-schools/
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kreimer - October 18, 2010 at 9:17 am
I’ve seen other corporations change their business strategy where they move down-market and begin to compete with their own customer base. In this case, the supplier of the learning management system to institutions that offer courses, now announces they are moving into the business of offerign courses themselves.
For a corporation to move into their customers’ space is like cutting off their own feet, and signals a deparate move for Blackboard. I wonder what kinds of pressures they are facing, to make such a move.
msscarlett - October 19, 2010 at 9:09 am
Switch to Moodle. It’s free, and it’s better than BB anyway…
manitoga - October 19, 2010 at 9:44 am
“The companies say their plan will offer a new way for students who lack basic skills to get caught up.”
I may be a bit naive, but if these students lack basic skills what are they doing in Higher Ed?
~Dr. Pepper
btracy7 - October 19, 2010 at 1:00 pm
Wow. Really? In the real world, there are disasters, family emergencies, incarceration, learning disabilities, poor K-12 schools–I could go on with the reasons why student lacking basic skills are in higher ed. High school only lets students stay so long, and then if they didn’t get it all or had to drop out or whatever crazy circumstances occurs, someone wonders “what they are doing in Higher ED?” Go to the NADE website and find out more about the demand for developmental education in higher ed. And I hope that they aren’t planning some prepackaged one size fits all program for this widely diverse population of students who need to fill in gaps before moving into college courses.
And why are most people posting about their intellectual property rights, which by the way many of your colleges and universities own, while not expressing concern over the needs of these students?
big_giant_head - October 19, 2010 at 2:13 pm
Remedial and Developmental classes are, by far, the most difficult to teach–or at least, to teach successfully. In my experience, the students who end up in these classes are often less capable of doing online work than most non-remedial students, too. They often have lower reading comprehension skills, and thus have difficulty even understanding what it is we want them to do in an online course, where there is no faculty member at their elbow to elaborate.
The subject matter in remedial classes may be simpler, but figuring out how to get it into students’ heads so that they can use it is a booger, to say the least. I can’t imagine anyone with experience teaching these subjects thinking it would be a good idea to offer them online.
Further, it’s going to be K-12 teachers doing the “instructing”? How nice. It’s not as if they are the level that is already failing these students.
lambertnettie - October 21, 2010 at 11:08 am
Jeff Young’s reporting that BlackBoard is marketing online remedial coursework for “students who lack basic skills to get caught up” is news, but not consequential to those who lack readiness. There are numerous excellent companies who provide software learning guides. It is the “hardware” that the poor and disadvantaged need. Readiness to learn in an online environment requires knowing how to use computers and owning a computer. These components to success are consequential to those who have difficulties and do not persist in community college environments. I wonder if institutions of higher ed will be providing those computers to remedial learners and the support essential to success.