A number of people have commented to me that they wish that they could make a difference in the Blackboard patent fight. In the process, they usually imply that I have some power that they don’t. The thing is, I’m not a decision-maker at my university, I don’t run an Open Source project or professional association, and I’m not in a position to hire an army of lawyers. Basically, I’m just a guy with a blog. If I can make a difference then you can too.
Here’s something really simple that you can do at your university, regardless of what your role is and regardless of what LMS you use (Even if it’s Blackboard!):
- Print out a copy of this article in Campus Technology. It’s basically a list of questions that university administrators should ask the school’s legal counsel. The answers should scare the pants off of them and hopefully prompt some action.
- Bring the article to somebody who is in a position to get in trouble if the university were to be sued for its LMS usage. It could be a dean, a provost, a CIO, a CFO…whatever. The more conservative and risk-averse the person is, the better.
- Ask them to read the article, and in doing so be sure to intone the magic phrase “legal liability exposure” multiple times. You’re worried about the university’s legal liability exposure. There could be hidden legal liability exposure with products or projects that you don’t even know are connected. And so on. You don’t have to talk about the morality of what Blackboard is doing or any of the big philosophical issues. In fact, the less said, the better. Let the magic phrase do all the work for you.
- If/when they come back to you properly concerned and ask for more information, then suggest that they work within whatever professional association is appropriate for their role (e.g., EDUCAUSE for CIO’s or Sloan-C for e-learning professionals) and see if they can’t get those groups to take a strong stand against the Blackboard patent. Also point them to NoEduPatents.org. And finally, if you are a Blackboard or WebCT shop, have them call Blackboard and express their displeasure.
That’s it! If you can educate your decision-makers about the risks that they incur because of the Blackboard patent, you will have accomplished something very important–more important, in fact, than I can accomplish as a blogger in many cases. I can’t knock on your provost’s door. You can. And ultimately, Blackboard cares much more about what your provost (or dean, or director, or CIO, or CFO, or VP) thinks than they do about what I think.
Tomorrow I will post about another very positive thing you can do that could both help with the Blackboard patent scandal and accomplish massive positive change in the entire e-Learning world in the process.
