I’m looking to get a sense of the reaction of the Blackboard/ANGEL news from ANGEL customers. If you are an ANGEL customer, please let me know what you think in the comments to this post. If you are writing a blog post of your own, please ping this post by linking to it. (Your post will show up as a pingback in the comments section of this post.)
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[…] reaccions a la compra per part de Blackboard d’Angel. Michael Feldstein està pescant per tenir retroalimentació i també enllaça a aquesta discussió de Twitter. De Reuters: “Les accions de la companyia […]
What can I say? Like I said to some colleagues… It’s like the Easter Bunny and Santa Clause ganging up to kill Peter Pan then shoot my dog.
I am disgusted and dismayed. Flat out I feel betrayed and in a state of complete disbelief. I can only assume that Bb threatened Angel with lawsuits over their bogus patent claims. Crap, I had a concept for an online learning system with roles back in 1996. Now if only I could produce those notes.
Many Angel users have a very strong dislike for Bb. I am one of those. After seeing what happened to WebCT during our last year with them, I see no light at the end of the tunnel. I still have an open support ticket from 3 years ago. Granted we had already given notice of cancellation, but come on!!!
With this ‘aquisition’, IUPUI can build a new campus. Good for them but horrible for the future of online education. Between Bb and Axiom (of HEOA student ID auth fame) I guess that many online programs will shrivel on the vine.
Certainly there will not be many brave soles to attempt new commercial LMS’s. Especially now that Bb will control all of the patents that make an LMS work. Even home grown systems could be at risk. The only reason Bb has not gone after open-source platforms is to try and say they are not a monopoly because there are technically choices.
I have I have been the LMS admin at my school for 10 years now. Cut my teeth on WebCT 1.x. I have managed WebCT, Moodle, Lon-Capa and Angel; not to mention testing Sakai and etudes and others. We have been Angel customers for three happy years. I cannot even begin to describe the gulf that is the difference between the coporate cultures of Angel and Bb after the WebCT aquisition. Don’t even get me started on the support issues.
I am deeply saddened and am contemplating loking for a new career. Once you’ve been an Angel admin it is hard to imagine the struggles I’ve had with other systems. Not to say that I haven’t had problems, but the way problems are dealt with says a lot about a company.
I will not work with Bb. Simple matter of principle. So come contract renewal time I will either have an updated resume or will reluctantly be putting down the ASP books to relearn PHP so I can reluctantly migrate fully to moodle.
Moodle is a great product but Angel’s features, interoperability, open system, admin tools etc simply blow it out of the water. I do feel a little better that I support about 20 classes on moodle so I won’t have a problem using it but faculty are another story. Don’t get me started about the moodle db structure either. It may be normalized but there is very little documentation, certainly nothing like the Er diagrams from Angel.
I have written to much but it has been an emotional day for me. In closing I do want to acknowledge that everyone I have met from Angel has been approachable, laid-back and just plain cool. Thanks for the personal call today and I’m sure we’ll talk next week.
Now where is my whiskey!!!! I need to dull the pain.
These are all just initial thoughts and I need to spend more time systematically working through all of it. However, to the best of my knowledge, Blackboard products can’t do what I envision/want in the future (and present) of LMSs (I would love to be wrong about this). ANGEL can. The mashup capabilities, ability to create custom widgets, openness for customization (without additional costs), the power of the built-in repository and sharing learning activities/objects among course, the way that master courses function, the price that is sensitive to smaller markets, the top notch customer support and amazing responsiveness to produce enhancement requests, and all of the integrated mail notification tools are all important in order to actualize my vision for e-learning programs. In addition, faculty at my school have now gone through two LMS changes in three years. If we are forced to make another jump in the next three years, I am concerned about losing good faculty as well as losing the great positive culture/momentum among faculty cultivated by the move to ANGEL. They love the intuitive nature of ANGEL. Some come from other schools that used WebCT, Blackboard, D2L and consistently report ANGEL as being the most intuitive and in tune with what will help someone teach, grade, and communicate easily/effectively. If this move means ANGEL going away, then we are losing what I consider to be the best product on the market. It is so good, that some of us have shaped an entire course/program design and training process around the features of ANGEL. It may well take some schools 2-3 years to recover (regain faculty trust and enthusiasm, redesigning the entire process, migrating all courses/programs/work groups, changing all training materials, and re-creating an entire professional development program) if we have to switch If Blackboard is the only option, I suppose one has to go with it rather than close doors. I realize that this is likely unrealistic, but my hope would be for Blackboard to recognize that ANGEL is the superior product and to redesign all of their current efforts in view of maintaining and building upon the current ANGEL LMS. Apart from all of this and on a very personal level, Blackboard is directly impacting the amount of work that I have to devote to these matters rather than focusing more of R&D, professional development, mentoring faculty, helping shape the best possible future of elearning, and trying to help create the best possible e-learning experiences for students and faculty (note that multiple roles and responsibilities are a necesity with many schools that have chosen ANGEL). With ANGEL, I was seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, was already being able to re-allocate energy to these other important tasks. With all of this stated, we’ll survive and thrive in the long run (although I am skeptical Blackboard is willing to be part of my vision for e-learning), and I am committed to still finding a way to devote primary energy to those other important tasks. On the plus side, because the Blackboard costs is so much more for many schools, these schools might be able to justify another full-time position, go open source, and still save money.
These are all just initial thoughts and I need to spend more time systematically working through all of this. However, to the best of my knowledge, Blackboard products can’t do what I envision/want in the future (and present) of LMSs (I would love to be wrong about this). ANGEL can. The mashup capabilities, ability to create custom widgets, openness for customization (without additional costs), the power of the built-in repository and sharing learning activities/objects among course, the way that master courses function, the price that is sensitive to smaller markets, the top notch customer support and amazing responsiveness to produce enhancement requests, and all of the integrated mail notification tools are all very important in order to actualize my vision for high quality e-learning programs that include both independent and collaborative learning. In addition, faculty at some schools have now gone through two LMS changes in three years (becuase of the Blackboard/WebCT merger). If we are forced to make another jump in the next three years, I am concerned about losing good faculty as well as losing the great positive culture/momentum among faculty cultivated by the move to ANGEL. Many love the intuitive nature of ANGEL. They come from other schools that used WebCT, Blackboard, D2L and consistently report ANGEL as being the most intuitive and in tune with what will help someone teach, grade, and communicate easily/effectively. If this move means ANGEL going away, then we are losing what I consider to be the best product on the market. It is so good, that some have shaped entire course/program design and training process around the features of ANGEL. If this acquisition means ANGEL fading in the near future, it may well take some schools 2-3 years just to recover (regain faculty trust and enthusiasm, redesigning the entire process, migrating all courses/programs/work groups, changing all training materials, and re-creating an entire professional development program). If Blackboard is the only option, I suppose one has to go with it rather than close doors. I realize that this is likely unrealistic, but my hope would be for Blackboard to recognize that ANGEL is the superior product and to redesign all of their current efforts in view of maintaining and building upon the current ANGEL LMS. For many smaller staffs, Blackboard is directly impacting the amount of work that they have to devote to these matters rather than focusing more of R&D, professional development, mentoring faculty, help shape the best possible future of elearning, and trying to help create the best possible e-learning experiences for students and faculty (note that multiple roles and responsibilities are a necessity of the smaller schools). With ANGEL, I was personally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, and was already being able to re-allocate energy to these other important tasks. With all of this stated, we’ll survive and thrive in the long run (although I’m not sure if Blackboard is willing to be part of my vision for e-learning and I’m not sure if I can, in good conscience, suggest that it be on a list of post-ANGEL options). On the plus side, because Blackboard cost is so much more for many schools, these schools might be able to justify another full-time position, go open source, still save money, and have the hope of retaining the list of important features included at the beginning of my comment.