Sunday, April 11, 2010

Hey, We're Getting a New Blackboard

Joy, of joys. We have been told that we are updating from Blackboard 8 to Blackboard 9. This, of course, means that the whole system must go down, and when it comes back up, everything will be new and different. Just can't wait to see what tricks the BB folks will play on us this time, and what new features will be available!

1 comment:

Professor Charles Evans said...

Boy, is this garbage, although the colors are nice. First they upgraded us a day before summer session has started. Four days into the session and my courses are slowly grinding to a halt because the new version of BB is unstable and down every ten minutes for about every five minutes that is is up. I can only image the chaos in the testing centers with students trying to take exams. No one in Richmond every seems to think about students.
Also, every tried to look through the BB user's manual to get information on how to do something in BB? Well forget about it. There is really very little there. I went looking for information about setting up graded discussion forums; nothing there. Had to ask a designer for help. Not sure who really is worth, the BB people themselves or the people trying to run and maintain it in the system.
Oops, almost forgot, another problem with BB is that it needs to be tailored for different ed environments, one for higher ed, one for high school, one for grade school, instead of trying to build all those capabilities into one product.
Oh, Blaaaaaackboard...