It has been a few years since I’ve penned a note to Blackboard before a Blackboard World. The last three years I haven’t shared my thoughts, but that ends now. Blackboard brings its clients and partners together at the Orlando World Center Marriott.
Ally is a game changer.
In October 2016, Blackboard purchased Fronteer, a UK based educational products and services company. It’s flagship product, Ally, was pushed to market by Blackboard. For those who don’t know, Ally reviews content in a learning management system, scores how well the content meets accessibility requirements, and helps develop alternative formats for students with disabilities. While a few schools quickly saw the potential of the product, Ally really came into its own this year. This product is the big game changer for many schools who don’t have the training or resources to address accessibility issues. In my opinion is the best product that Blackboard has in its product portfolio.
Hopeful for the people who have moved up into leadership including two folks from Angel.
In early June Bill Ballhaus, Blackboard CEO, posted on the company’s blog about some leadership shifts within the company. Katie Blot left the company and many Blackboard veterans moved into leadership roles. Two of these, Phill Miller and Jim Chalex, came from the ANGEL platform. Phill has the title of Chief Learning and Innovation Officer. He oversees all of the company’s online teaching and learning solutions. Chalex slides fills Miller’s vacant position. Chalex previously lead the Learn SaaS and Ultra development. While there are other position shifts, I have met and dealt with both these gentlemen. They both have done quite a lot to help make improvements in the Blackboard Learn product and I’m glad to see that being recognized by the company.
Re Prioritize development efforts
Praise, however, cannot be given for the lack of development Blackboard has done in the Blackboard Original experience. The majority of clients use the Original experience, however it gets a 5th of the development work when compared to Ultra which has a minority set of clients using it. Let’s break it down by the numbers. Only 361 clients are using SaaS as of June 2018 and only 50 of those clients use the Ultra experience. While I don’t have numbers on how many Blackboard Learn clients the company has. I am going to assume that 50 is a small minority.
I sat in on the Blackboard roadmap session webinar in June 2018. Over the course of the coming year, only 3 new features will be added by Blackboard to the Original experience. That same webinar the Ultra experience will get 7 new features that aren’t in the Original experience. Please note that I’m not counting the numerous features being added that will bring the Ultra experience into parity with the Original experience.
This inequality really hurts many institutions who have no interest in Ultra. May I remind Blackboard leadership that the reason many school’s stay with Blackboard is they like the interface they currently use. Spending a majority of development dollars on a experience that a minority use and do little to develop features within the Original experience might be the tipping point for institutions to leave. It also really doesn’t impress BbWorld attendees who have leadership wanting to move to other solutions.
Develop better proactive support and prompt communication of cloud issues.
While Blackboard has made efforts to improve support and communication, it still needs much more work. Over the past year, Blackboard has dealt with several issues or situations where a lack of communication created a bit of frustration. Once incident came about after it took Blackboard over 48 hours to realize SafeAssign’s cloud storage was full. This issue wasn’t communicated to clients for several hours after being made aware of it.
Throughout the year, network maintenance in the company’s data centers would cause numerous cryptic bulletins coming out to clients stating services might be unavailable during 12 hour maintenance windows while classes were in session. Many times the notices would come two weeks or two months which made the situations even more frustrating. Blackboard needs to classify these changes, based on the level or risk / impact, and create a communication plan for each type which provides clients will clear time frames so clients stay in the loop. Let’s hope we see improvement on this issue in the coming year.
The rollout and promised deliverables for Bb Instructor have been a disaster. Apologies required.
A year ago, Blackboard released it’s instructor mobile app. Since that release, Blackboard promised the ability for grading was coming soon. While the grading functionality is currently being tested, the company didn’t deliver this promise in the time frame it promised last year. This was a big failure that really hurt many clients who came back to institutions after Blackboard World 2017 recommending the Instructor app to their instructors. The app’s 2.5 rating within the Google Play store and its reviews there show many agree with this evaluation. In today’s mobile world, this delay really caused the company a setback which further removed it from being a leader in the market. There needs to be an apology from the Blackboard main stage from Bill about this issue.
Require some Box representatives to attend the conference to hear client frustrations about their slow delivery of parity tools lost when the company sunsetted Crocodoc.
The move from Crocodoc to Box that happened in December 2017 was a big issue for many institutions. Box failed to create the same tools in it’s replacement service called, Box View. This annoyance upset many faculty which created pressure on many Blackboard administrators. I must give Blackboard’s credit that they have worked to get these issues addressed, but some administrator’s think it’s not fast enough. Box needs to hear from more than just Blackboard as the company, but also hear how much pain they are putting on the companies clients.
The open source development of Blackboard integrated tools has dropped.
Blackboard once had a lot of development lead by institutions around the world to improve the environment. Over the past few years, with the push of REST APIs and moving away from building blocks, there has been less development in the open source community of building blocks through additional non-profit organizations like OSCELOT. While items such as Tsugi continue open source developmental efforts, it would be great to see that same push for building blocks. I really would like to see the company continue to help institutions with open source development. This could be partnering with schools to develop tools for the Blackboard Learn or provide financial or training resources which help develop these tools.
Great info Terry, thanks for sharing your insights.
I couldn’t agree more. Speaking of communication, can we also mention BbWorld Live 2018 is missing as well?
What did you think of Bb World? I found it to be a bit depressing. The energy was low. Nobody I talked w was excited or confident about Ultra. I talked to SaaS clients that did not even consider Ultra as part of that decision. That blew my mind.