Looking at Information Technology Services’ Critical Event Log last week was like looking at a battle scene:

Monday — “Blackboard Learn not responding, staff investigating.”

Tuesday — “Blackboard Learn node B is slow because it is using too much processing power, fixed by rebooting the server.”

Wednesday — “Blackboard configuration options are changed with a 5 to 10 minute loss of service.”

Thursday — “Blackboard learn is freezing when accessing files and got a replacement load balancer to help with outages.”

Iowa State has used WebCT and its successor for many years now, but are we still in bed with Blackboard for the right reasons? Many students might agree that WebCT, a company started in the mid ‘90s, had issues keeping up with the times throughout the years. Blackboard wasn’t much of an improvement after buying out WebCT to eliminate their biggest competitor a couple years ago.

It must be good to be in the learning management system business. It’s a business where you can host a small monopoly and sell your software for millions of dollars to willing universities (one source reports that Blackboard has thousands of university customers). For many schools, Blackboard also provides hosting, which costs even more per student (Iowa State hosts our own servers). And if you want it, Blackboard will sell you extra storage space. It only costs about 20 times as much as Amazon.com’s business solutions.

Would we lose much by trying a different service? Moodle is used for some courses around campus and works fine for the most part. Other options include Instructure’s Canvas LMS or Pearson’s LearningStudio. Heck, because Instructure is only making money from hosting services, we could use Canvas for free, or at least the same fixed costs as Blackboard, minus the licensing fees.

If any switch would allow us to depend on our LMS as a service rather than as an annoyance, that would be great. There have been complaints on Reddit.com about what a deadline really means on Blackboard when the service is only up a portion of the time. Does a midnight deadline mean turning an assignment in by 11:59 or turning it in at 10:00 just to be safe – in case Blackboard is down tonight? Or perhaps aim for the deadline and send complaints to your professor if Blackboard won’t accept your assignment at the right time.

While we will likely have to endure Blackboard for at least a few more years, we ask that those in charge carefully evaluate the cost versus the benefit of Blackboard Learn when the current contract expires. In the meantime, do us all a favor and keep the servers online as much as possible.