e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: Blackboard-Inc.

  • Chronicle's Article on Blackboard's Competition

    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 services…I don’t know if there are 300 full-time people currently working on Sakai.

    This is entirely consistent with Blackboard’s strategy,  outlined in one of my recent posts, of arguing that they are more “enterprise-y” than their competition because they are bigger and spend more money. As Michael K points out, this particular rehearsal of the argument based on developer numbers is specious in a number of ways. But another thing to consider here is that maybe the brute force that Blackboard has to apply in terms of developer numbers to produce their product may indicate that they are actually doing something wrong. 

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  • 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 offer, and got a tour from him and John Fontaine. And while I didn’t quite get a full answer to the vaporware question, I did learn a lot of other interesting stuff about the platform and Blackboard’s strategy.

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  • 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]

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    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 President Mike Stanton brief analysts winning appreciative comments. They also make presentations at conferences of financial analysts with similar responses.

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  • 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 that a re-exam would only make their patent stronger) and D2L asking the US Court of Appeals not to hear Blackboard’s case until the USPTO issues a final ruling. D2L has won the first of these two battles.

  • 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.

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  • 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 choice of an instructional method impact the design, development, or choice and use of a learning system? (2) And implicitly from his response to this conference, what conferences and conference programs increase the adoption and use of education methodologies and technologies? Both have been topics of discussion since the San Francisco MoodleMoot; this post responds to those issues.

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  • 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 Appeals for the Federal District, the Patent Office has yet to rule on the two challenges to parent validity by the Software Freedom Law Center and Desire2Learn, and, according to The Chronicle’s Jeff Young, a new trial looms over the latest version of Desire2Learn’s software.

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