At this year’s BbWorld16 users conference, Blackboard’s new executive team demonstrated their ability to deliver a much tighter, more coherent message of what they are learning from talking to customers and what the focus of the company will be in the next few years. The “1 Learn, 2 Experiences (Original and Ultra), and 3 Deployments (Self-Hosted, Managed-Hosted, and SaaS)” meme is an example. Words are easy to come by, however, and Blackboard leadership needs to back up their claims, particularly with the Learn LMS and particularly with the long-delayed Learn Ultra.
Michael described the challenges that Blackboard and its new CEO Bill Ballhaus face back in January, with this comment about Learn Ultra [emphasis added]:
Prove that Ultra is real: While there are customers who will not be quick to move off of 9.x (for a variety of reasons), nobody believes that the current platform represents a compelling future for digital learning environments. It is long in the tooth. But schools evaluating LMSs have largely discounted Ultra because they don’t think it’s real and they’re not convinced that it ever will be. Now that the product is a year late, they have increased reason to be skeptical. We have heard that there are schools piloting Ultra, but I am not aware of any public information about how these pilots are going or even which schools are participating. Blackboard needs to ship Ultra and trot out some customers who are willing to speak publicly about their experiences with it. If they fail, they will not get a do-over.
While this inaccurate claim came from the previous executive team, and while I have heard nothing but positive reviews from Blackboard staff about the new CEO, this does not mean that previous claims are irrelevant. And the issue is not what Blackboard told us at e-Literate, it is more what they have told or not told the higher education (and K-12) communities. (more…)