I spent a lot of time a few years ago trying to build a BB replacement [0] that we ended up abandoning. Here's what I learned:

The LMS (learning management system) sales decision in made by either the university administration or the office for information technology (using a checklist made by the administration). Neither of these groups have significant contact with the UX, so they don't really care about it. And the people that do have contact with the UX (teachers/students) all want different things, but have no way of having their concerns heard by the decision makers.

One of the very important checklists items is that there be thorough documentation provided on how to preform every course relevant action. This is so that the computer illiterate art teacher can be hander a 500 page manual and be told that he now has no excuse not to use the LMS. This has the side effect of making UX improvement basically impossible, because the improvement would likely break the manual (that no one actually uses) and thereby violate the terms of the sale contract.

From the perspective of a UX designer, working in this space has all of the downsides of designing for enterprise plus all of the downsides of designing for multiple user groups that all want different things. I really wish I had understood this when I started that project.

EDIT: I got an email asking if there are any ways to make this market work from a designers perspective. One that I've seen work quite well is to borrow the textbook business model: Ignore the administration, cater to faculty, fuck the students. TopHat [1] has had a lot of success with this model. Just like with text books, a teacher deicides to use a tool, and then forces all of the students to pay for it. Your 2 users personas are tech-savvy teachers and college students. Both of these groups are prepared for frequent UX tweaks and UX improvements are rewarded with more repeat business instead of indifference. So it's a big win from a designers perspective. The business model is borderline immoral, but the more I learn about the higher ed market, the more convinced I become that it is the least bad option for operating in a very broken system.

[0] http://rootlearn.com/

[1] https://tophat.com/

The best option for Blackboard higher education is, IMO, fuck the decision makers, ignore the faculty, cater to the students. Let students edit all the info, faculty will get on board when they see students using it, decision makers want control when faculty and students are using it -> $$$.

The reason is teachers only care about Blackboard insofar as they are forced to use it by the administration. They don't really get anything out of it. This is different than interactive lecture software like TopHat, which teachers like. Students on the other hand do get something out of a working Blackboard: they get info they want to see such as homework due dates, what to study for exams, homework help from other students, etc. Unlike with TopHat there is also a strong network effect necessary, which you would get out of focusing on students.

So I think of this as "the Yammer strategy." But I don't know what academic activity students would want to engage in when they are not being forced to do so.

What activity would students be voluntarily engaging in on your Yammer.edu that would be so awesome it would be viral, and then your best monetization plan would be to give schools backend access?

Students want to know lots of info that is in blackboard, on the professor's personal web pages, and things that were said in the lectures, tips for exercises. In each lecture each student writes down:

- What homework is due for the next lecture

- Which chapters of the book were taught

- Notes copied from the blackboard (real life blackboard), and recently I see more and more students take a picture of the blackboard with their phone instead

Instead imagine a web application for doing this collaboratively. One student puts the lecture schedule in the calendar. When the prof says that homework is due on october 5, another student puts this in the calendar. Instead of having to go to 10 different personal web sites and 10 courses in blackboard, and look in your personal agenda, you can just take one look at the calendar to see which homework is due next week. Blackboard photos taken with smartphones get uploaded. If you don't understand something you can ask a question, and other students or the professor can answer. Some professors already put a lecture schedule on their personal websites, and if you make it easier than doing it manually in HTML they may be tempted to switch.

It is really hard to convince professors to use such a system, and I think it's much easier to convince students. You need some students to boostrap it and enter the information for some courses, so that other students want to use it to find that info, and hopefully contribute some of their own info. Students take different courses, so if a student learned about this in one course they may enter the info of the other course they are taking. Some students take courses in different universities, so it can even spread beyond one university.

You could maybe bootstrap it with a stackoverflow-like point system and by allowing people to ask questions across campuses. There's a lot to like about the Yammer strategy, but the key is (1) bootstrapping it (2) error checking and (3) dealing with the fact that 90% of student just cannot be bothered.

What would the super-over-achievers like in exchange for their effort? Job offers/interviews (companies like conscientious team players)? Bragging rights (a la stackOverflow)?

Many people just like to help out their classmates. People already share this information, just inefficiently.

> But I don't know what academic activity students would want to engage in when they are not being forced to do so.

Plagiarism, mostly :-/.

Ahhh yes. The joys of not being to make UX improvements because the manual already printed @_@

Even the install is a mishmash of voodoo and arcane knowledge. Horrible horrible thing.

This was my initial reaction as well but I was pleasantly surprised. This is a lot more interesting than any replacement software for BB.

I came here just to say the same exact thing.

In case anyone else is wondering, the comments are evidently referring to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard_Inc.

and not this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard_system

I am surprised to see the bad comments about Blackboard software. I never use it. But my ex-manager and several ex-colleagues (software developers and QA) are now working for Blackboard. They are confident in their company's future.

That doesn't mean that they make good software.

That's because blackboard is a lot like Oracle they have more lawyers than programmers.

Blackboard has wicked lock-in, and contracts with the kinds of organizations that just keep paying their support and maintenance contracts for year after year after year. They could sit on their hands for the next half-decade and have a bright future.

A lot of issues were because of laws/policies required to install software on the premises... And making such complex software to perform well, when school sysadmin manages it, can be hard to make bulletproof. As laws and mindset changes, Blackboard moves to SaaS model with much more precise control over configuration, deployment, etc.

As for software itself, if you are interested, google "new learning experience blackboard". This is 1 year old initiative to bring friendlier UI and as much as possible focus on student, instead of schools. And with acquisition of MyEdu there is push towards students owning their data, not schools. It is hard from both political (schools hate idea of not owning data) and technical standpoints, but we are slowly getting there :)

I just watched their promo video, and it's still terrible, but with a less ancient looking skin. Interesting how they can so completely miss the point.

Would you mind explaining what is it missing? I work at Blackboard and would love to get honest feedback :)

Blackboard is institutionally bad. The company is rotten to the core. It's pushed onto universities and schools through bribery, corruption, and deceit. I have seen this first-hand at two different places. The admins choose because it looks enterprisey and expensive. They figure they've spent the money, so the problem is solved. They also frequently get some very nice kickbacks for accepting to buy this piece of crap. It's buggy, hard to use, horrible to modify, expensive.

The most honest feedback I can get you is this: for your own moral rectitude, quit this job and find yourself a more ethical job.

Oh please. Overdramatic much?

Blackboard might have a poor UX, but it at least serves a useful function. Can you say the same for the web 2.0 companies that only exist to spy on you and sell your info to advertisers?

If you have evidence of actual corruption, then let's hear it. You can and should get someone to prosecute if the evidence you have is real. Otherwise maybe you should stop making false accusations. This isn't slashdot.

Thanks for hateback, but i choose to stay. Otherwise if all good people leave, who going to develop good software? (because blackboard will not die even with bad software per your post :))

I will fix it from inside.

You really won't. This isn't mean to be a knock on you, but even the CEO probably can't fix this. Do some research on distruption theory and you'll discover that your company is built to withstand the very kinds of change that you seek. Even a Jedi has to exit when they have no leverage in a given situation.

Also - if you don't already have an overwhelmingly strong picture of what is wrong with blackboard, I'd suggest that your heart isn't invested in improving it, and you might be better off at a company whose software you love.

You won't solve the problem as a software developer. It's not a software problem. Try to climb the ranks into management and weed out corruption as you see it.

Me and other good devs will solve software side of problems, and other good people will fix managerial one :)

Are you saying that everyone in management and engineering had been replaced and Blackboard is essentially a startup which happens to have inherited all the exciting contracts? If so, then maybe you stand a chance.

Otherwise, I'm sure you'll learn a lot from the attempt.

There is a lot of new people indeed (both managers and tech.) Quite a few startups were acquihired too. But I think most important factor - management openly concerned about competition and tries to push toward better product. And it appears to be much better timing too - institutions are more open to "cloud" today, than they were 10 years ago.

"Cloud" in the hands of a corrupt company... will not be good.

There isn't anything missing, on the contrary, there's too much so that the things that people actually care about are not easy. Nobody cares about an "ecosystem of applications", or "out of classroom experience". Put yourself in the mind of the student. What are their top questions?

1. What homework is due?

2. When and where are my lectures?

3. What was taught or will be taught in some specific lecture?

4. What do I need to study for my exam?

5. At the start of the semester: Which courses are available, and info about each course (topic, teacher, book, etc.)

Now, the promo video doesn't show very much, but let's see how you would find out about homework in current Blackboard. I need to log in (it doesn't keep you logged in). Then I click on "courses". Then for each course I need to click on that course and browse the course's pages to find out if homework is mentioned somewhere. And of course because the professors find blackboard terrible too, most of them put the homework on their personal webpages instead, so not even half of the info is there. All in all it's about 100 clicks to find out the answer to question (1). Maybe the professors are just putting the info in the wrong place which makes it hard for the students to find, but this also counts as a failure of Blackboard.

What should you do instead. Keep people logged in. The main page right after logging in should be a full page calendar with the schedule of lectures, exams, and homework due. Then for each course there should be ONE page. Current blackboard has zillions of pages per course, but 99% are empty and the info related to one course easily fits on one page so you don't need to hunt among the empty pages for the info you need. The professors who have the course page on their personal website always use one page, and it's much more usable. On the page of a course there should be general info, and info for each lecture (but not on a separate page per lecture!). The lectures in the calendar should link to the per lecture info, which is on that one page per course, scrolled down.

This way question (1) and question (2) can be answered by one glance at the calendar homepage. Question (3), (4) and (5) can be answered by clicking on a lecture in the calendar, i.e. one click away from the homepage.

Now for a very important point: let the students edit this info! If some professor does not use blackboard or uses it badly, make sure the students do. Let them put up a page for the course, enter the lecture schedule in the calendar, mark when homework is due, etc. Blackboard is much more useful if all info is there. Of course you get nightmares about letting students edit this, but trust me it will be good. If wikipedia can let anonymous people all around the world edit it, blackboard can let non-anonymous students of a particular course edit it.

The real problem of course is that Blackboard isn't built for students, and isn't built for teachers. It's built for the people who make the decision to buy Blackboard. That's why Blackboard will die like a fly to a competitor that does get this right. They will provide all this for free, initially, and students and teachers will use it out of their free will, and Blackboard will be even more empty than it already is. If you're losing 70% teachers who put info on their personal homepage, and are willing to learn HTML to avoid having to use Blackboard (!), imagine what a halfway decent competitor that isn't "code your own website in HTML" could do.

Zillion empty pages is old interface, not new one. In new interface, me and many other are actively working right now, UI is way less cluttered. This is what me and others were hired to fix. Promo video probably did not address it well enough (which is good to know.)

I think [1] might give you better idea (although it is too much time to spend unless you are really interested in it.) You will notice, that some parts of UI are still old, but these are going to be replaced bit by bit, since Blackboard moved to continuous deployment model (which again, became possible only recently as schools became more relaxed toward keeping data "in the cloud".

[1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLontYaReEU1tCbsCDP-u_...

That looks much better, but most of what I said still applies. Too many pages, info that people actually need is missing or hard to get at. It looks like this is focused on middle/high school though, where that may not apply. For universities a lot of info that students need seems to be missing, but those videos show a teacher's view so maybe it is there but not visible to teachers.

Messages: nobody will use this, everyone uses email or facebook. You cannot win that battle. Replace feature with an email address link.

Calendar: great, make this the homepage and display WAY more info per page.

Assignments: good, but no need for a separate page; should just be accessible via the calendar. More ways of getting at the same info is bad.

Activity stream: should just be in the calendar.

The UI shown there is also still quite bad. Watch the discussions video for example. "You can easily create a discussion right on the course content page" -> click on "courses" -> select the course -> click on (+) circle -> click on "create" -> click on "participation and engagement" -> click on "discussion". Really?

Of course this is another feature that nobody will use. No student is going to participate in a discussion topic opened by a teacher on blackboard. Instead should replace this with a feature where students can post a question (like stackoverflow) and where the teacher and other students can answer. THAT is useful, if students can actually know that somebody will actually read their question and they are not just posting in a place that nobody will ever look at. Therefore it needs prominent placement on the course main page. Not a link to the discussions tab, which has further links to each question, which is a page with the actual question. The actual questions that were asked should be right on the course's main page.

I've encountered worse. When I was in college, we used WebCT.

I'm fairly sure students could've written a better tool as a senior project.

(edit: oh, hey, Blackboard bought WebCT a while back. Eww.)

We use this:

https://www.learnium.com/about/