Flexknowlogy – Jared Stein's ARCHIVED blog – update to jaredstein.org

Today Blackboard announced that it has acquired ANGEL Learning, Inc., producer of one of the most widely used course management system (CMS) in US higher education (according to ITC‘s March 2009 Distance Education survey, ANGEL was 2nd only to Blackboard+WebCT). In 2005 Blackboard acquired its primary rival WebCT, making it quite possibly the number one CMS provider to higher education institutions in the USA. (more…)

Ever been annoyed by Blackboard Vista’s (or Campus Edition 6+’s) rendering of your XHTML + CSS web pages? Yeah, me too–especially on Internet Explorer. This happens because Bb Vista triggers a browser’s quirks mode in spite of DOCTYPEs and validated markup (more…)

WebCT was infamous for it’s calculated column formula textarea that you couldn’t type in. When John Krutsch developed a clever Javascript hack for it (just one of several cool IE-only hacks packaged as WebCT PowerTools), crafting unusual formulas was suddenly more viable, and we began dropping not just the lowest score, but several low scores (more…)

Our Chief Information Office, Ray Walker sent me an article in The Chronicle: Blackboard Customers Consider Alternatives. It’s a great read to gauge the current state of the corporate LMS leviathan.

One passage in particular percolated my sense of irony. In addressing the idea that institutions may have more flexibility to innovate with open source solutions, Michael Chasen… (more…)

Campus Technology reports that all 44 of Blackboard’s LMS-related patent claims were rejected by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office based on 10 issues raised in a reexamination request filed by the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) in November, 2006.

Blackboard has two months to respond to the USPTO’s determination, and we can bet they will bankroll as big a response as possible. Surely their recent victory against Desire2Learn for patent infringement will fuel their strength of will to fight. For my part, Bb’s lawsuit leaves me wondering if allowing the lawsuit to stand trial while a USPTO reexamination request was under review was not just premature, but also extremely wasteful of our tax dollars and court time.

Desire2Learn announced on February 22nd that Blackboard has won its patent infringement lawsuit against them, stating, “the jury has handed down its verdict that the patent is valid and that Blackboard should be awarded damages of approximately $3 million.”

Blackboard filed the lawsuit on July 26, 2006 against competitor Desire2Learn based on intellectual property claims related to it’s Blackboard’s U.S. patent #6,988,138. Blackboard has argued that it had invested 100 million dollars in the development of the educational products protected under the patent. (NoEduPatents.com has made an explanation of Blackboard’s 44 patent claims.)

Backlash to the Blackboard patent by the open source and educational communities has been strong since news of the lawsuit first broke, and will likely continue through communities such as boycottblackboard.org. I personally did not expect Blackboard’s claims would be upheld when re-examined by the patent office, let alone that the lawsuit would be validated by the jury.

Because the patent claims are broad and impact so many common e-learning features, Blackboard’s legal victory is bound to be discouraging and troublesome to other commercial learning management system providers such as Angel Learning, eCollege, and Agilix. Blackboard has previously declared that it would not assert it’s U.S. patents against open source software development, e.g. Moodle and Sakai.

Does this apparent magnanimity bolster my favor for Blackboard? Certainly not; the position is superficial at best, and Blackboard knows it. Anyway, it’s beside the point: though I personally lean towards open source software for educational technology, I am a capitalist, and free market competition and consumer-driven innovation of services and products is important to me. Blackboard’s overblown patent claims are an affront to innovation and competition, taking advantage of systemic failures in U.S. Patent regulations.

And though some will dismiss this news based on the argument that even conceptually the LMS has inherent flaws (failure to keep up with current technologies, inauthentic, lack of learner ownership, creepy-tree-house, etc), I believe the LMS is still a valuable toolset for many. The LMS has has propelled e-learning into a new frontier by standardizing the basic communication and delivery features for an educational audience. The LMS’s ability to provide teachers an easy-to-use set of online educational tools in a one-stop-shopping experience is and will remain considerable for the next 5 years at least. (The unfortunate reality is that alternative networked education “systems” such as personal learning environments are still being thought out and developed–at the very least alternatives are probably not ready for widespread adoption and implementation by faculty members.)

Regardless of whether you’re pro-LMS or anti-LMS in general, I think the larger debate about software patents particularly when applied to education is an issue we in ed tech all have a stake in. At the ITC conference last week I picked up a witty t-shirt given to me by The rSmart Group that signifies the position of many:

Sources

• Desire2Learn’s Patent Lawsuit Blog
• Blackboard’s Patent Info Page
• Blackboard’s U.S. patent #6,988,138
• NoEduPatents’s Explanation of Blackboard’s 44 patent claims
• Groklaw: Reexamination of Blackboard Patent
• Wikipedia: Software Patent Debate
• BoycottBlackboard.org

Several higher education institutions in Utah are part of a Blackboard Vista 4 statewide implementation hosted by the very capable and laudable folks at UEN. While I myself have never been a fan of the WebCT/Blackboard Vista as a Learning Management System (LMS), I recognized early in the pilot that the choice of this LMS was inevitable, and so we roll with the punches.

However, even prior to the official implementation of (then WebCT) Vista, John Krutsch and I began test-piloting Moodle, the popular open source LMS. Both John and I found Moodle 1.6 to be, in most respects, fully the equal of Blackboard Vista 4; though it lacked a couple of important features (e.g. selective release), it also sported some great and forward-looking new tools (e.g. workshops with peer/self-assessments, blogs, wikis, RSS, student-edited glossaries, custom themes, etc). Add to that the fact that Moodle is open source, has a formidable user-base that’s always supportive, and requires no licensing fee, Moodle seemed the likely successor of BB Vista.

Earlier this month there have been orchestrations by a local company called Agilix to woo state institutions towards their new LMS product, GoCourses. Though already in use by BYU‘s extensive Independent Study program, my preview of the Agilix LMS struck me as still in beta. But that’s a good thing, for Agilix seems keen to listen to ideas and feedback from state institutions as it urges each of us to the alter.

On the BB Vista admin’s mailing list there have been some questions and some minor grumblings about Agilix, and the possibility of massive change despite the fact that most of us who are involved in educational technology are still licking our wounds from the Vista migration. Here’s my response to all the good folks there:

Though IMS and common cartridge is coming along, I think we’re still a long way from a painless transition, no matter what happens. Whether it’s a change from BB Vista to BB Super Enterprise Campus Miracle Edition, or to Agilix or to Moodle or to whatever, there will be pain. WebCT CE 4 to WebCT Vista 4 is pain. Vista or CE to Moodle is pain. Sometimes even Vista to Vista is pain. I’m about to find out if Moodle or Vista to Agilix is pain. We owe it to ourselves to make sure the pain’s worth it.

From my point of view, migrating to Blackboard Vista has not been worth the pain. Don’t get me wrong: I have absolutely no complaints with the strong support and command of Vista that UEN provides us, but the Vista product itself was hardly a huge advance from CE 4.1, and, as I’ve suggested in the past, Vista took almost as many steps backward as it took forward.

At UVU we too are experimenting with alternatives, and I support these experiments as much out of apathy for Blackboard as out of recognition that change _is_ inevitable. My personal prediction is we at UVSC will see some sort of institutional LMS change pushed down or brought up within 2 years. To that end, I’m excited to play with Agilix, but I’m still very enthused about our successes and experiences with Moodle. I doubt either will be a panacea, but that’s probably true of anything we try. At least with Moodle it’s open source and easily modifiable, customizable, and of course the license is free.

If that seems too much of an endorsement of Moodle, think again: I am after the absolute best LMS that will offer our diverse institutions more of what they need than Vista currently does. I’m also strongly in favor of longevity in a product, and the mere fact that Moodle is open source and does not have a limited license sets me at ease. But if another product had a similar solution (i.e. an unlimited use, perpetual license) that would satisfy me as well.

At any rate, it’s going to be an interesting next few years. I am privileged to be witness to the rapid changes in LMS, and have hope that we’ll end up with something that is ultimately better. Eventually I want to see us go LMS-less, but that, wouldn’t you know, still poses a number of significant challenges, both for IT and regular (non-geek) faculty.