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[lohai0]

I think I've decided that the only people patient enough to use the Bb course calendar also grow bonsai trees. This is the first year we've been mandated to use the Blackboard gradebook. I hate it with the fire of a thousand suns.

[madhatter]

I am so happy that I am NOT teaching with Bb this term. My summer course just about killed me.

[polly_mer]

For reasons that escape me, tutorials for students on Blackboard are not held the first week of classes; instead, they are usually several weeks into the semester.

This is similar to things I've seen at many places.  The reasoning here is that the students and the people who would give the tutorial are both too busy or too unavailable until a few weeks into the semester.

The problem is that what's keeping them busy is trying to figure out what in God's name has gone wrong with the stupid CMS this time. 

Yep.  Today (the third day of classes), the CMS folks sent two emails explaining that we were not to use the email announcements feature because of the known (to everyone except our CMS folks) issue that all the emails will be sent by the CMS admin account, not the professor's account.  I wonder how many emails that account got.  We were informed that the emailed replies that went to that account would not be forwarded so we should notify our students of the problem.

That explains the email I got earlier today from a student who requested that I resend her all the email I've sent the class so far.  However, I'm still confused because students should have gotten the one email I sent using the send email function.  But, fine, she can have that email.

Anyone still think that changing to the completely new system the week before classes was a good idea?  Anyone?

[spork]

Anyone here familiar with or gotten feedback from students about Blackboard's mobile device apps? I'm curious how user-friendly it might be to use Blackboard 9.1 on a smartphone, iPad, etc.

[_touchedbyanoodle_]

For those praising Moodle, keep in mind that your college has to do the design, administration, and support in house, and what your version of Moodle looks like will only be as good as your full-time Moodle administrators. Considering what it costs to hire and keep good LMS administrators, Moodle doesn't often end up being cheaper. Faculty at my college keep asking for Moodle, but they don't understand that we don't even have one full-time LMS administrator right now, and that there's no way administration understands Moodle well enough to understand that you can't just buy the platform without buying people to run it.

That said, BB can go to hell and die. My CC switched to ANGEL to get away from BB, and then the bastards went and bought ANGEL. Of course, support for ANGEL has gone to s***, and now we're either stuck letting BB handle our migration to their platform (which they will screw up) or handling our own migration to another entirely new LMS that BB will probably just buy.

Isn't monopolizing an industry supposed to be illegal? The powers that be at BB have no souls. There's no other explanation.

I'm switched from using the paid LMS as an actual home for my materials to using it merely as a portal to my materials that are hosted elsewhere. I can do just about everything I need with Google applications, except discussion forums, which BB hasn't jacked up too much yet.

[conjugate]

That said, BB can go to hell and die.

Agreed, although I'd put it in the other order.

My CC switched to ANGEL to get away from BB, and then the bastards went and bought ANGEL. Of course, support for ANGEL has gone to s***, and now we're either stuck letting BB handle our migration to their platform (which they will screw up) or handling our own migration to another entirely new LMS that BB will probably just buy.

Or sue into oblivion, or both.

Isn't monopolizing an industry supposed to be illegal? The powers that be at BB have no souls. There's no other explanation.

No, remarkably, a monopoly may be legal; what's illegal is certain behaviors related to having a monopoly (such as illegally preventing competitors from getting started).  I remember reading a discussion of this back in the ancient days when the DoJ was going after Microsoft.