Jeff Young has a great piece in The Chronicle called “Blackboard Customers Consider Alternatives“. As usual, Michael Korcuska has insightful things to say about it. I only have a little bit to add on one quote from Blackboard CEO Michael Chasen: I have 300 people on my development team working full time on our products and […]
Blackboard-Inc.
Blackboard's NG Strategy
A few weeks back, I got an invitation from Matt Small to get a tour of Blackboard NG. Given all the rumors and speculation around it, I was obviously interested. I particularly wanted to know how much of it exists in code today and how much is vapor. So I took Matt up on his […]
Blackboard, Inc. Analysis, Part 2: Financial Performance
This is a guest post by Jim Farmer. Investors should be pleased with Blackboard’s stock prices. The stock prices consistently outperform the NASDAQ Composite Index. [1] Financial analysts continue to rate the stock as outperforming the market with buy and strong buy recommendations. Each quarter Blackboard CEO Mike Chasen, CFO Mike Beach and Senior Vice […]
Blackboard, Inc., Loses Battle In EduPatent Venue Fight
According to a blog entry on Desire2Learn’s Patent blog, the US Patent and Trademark Office has denied Blackboard’s request to suspend the re-examination process. Bb and D2L have been fighting over the venue for the next round of the battle, with Blackboard asking the USPTO not to complete the re-examination process (despite having earlier said […]
Blackboard, Inc. Analysis, Part 1: Software Licenses
This is a guest post by Jim Farmer. As the dominant supplier of learning system software, Blackboard Inc. is “mission critical” to colleges and universities in the U.S. It has been more than two years since Blackboard completed the acquisition of WebCT. Reviewing Blackboard’s performance may provide some insight.
Social Constructivists and eLearning
This is a guest post by Jim Farmer On July 15th Luke Fernandez, Weber State University and frequent Sakai contributor, posted “Moodle and Social Constructionism: Looking for the Individual in the Community” on Academic Commons. Broadly interpreting his post about attending the San Francisco MoodleMoot US 2008, he identified two issues: (1) How does the […]
The Second Anniversary: Blackboard v. Desire2Learn
This is a guest post by Jim Farmer Two years ago while speaking at the Desire2Learn Users Conference, CEO John Baker learned that Blackboard Inc. accused Desire2Learn of infringing a Blackboard patent. Following a jury’s decision and failed attempts to reach a settlement, the dispute is now headed for appeal at the U.S. Court of […]