Impressions of CMSs beyond Blackboard?

October 20, 2005 5:42 AM

What are your impressions of the various course management systems you've used? My college is having a look beyond Blackboard, especially after the merger news.

We're hoping to get an idea of how the other products, such as Sakai, Angel, and Moodle, work out. Where they nightmares to implement? Did anyone migrate from Blackboard to another? How did that go? How have the students and instructors felt about them? With the open source ones, how does problem resolution go, especially for schools without much programming resources?

I'd especially like to hear from students and instructors, so please chime in if your here. Thanks!

posted by jwells to Education (23 answers total)

Response by poster: For others I'll add my own experiences to the topic. We implemented Blackboard Basic in '99 and it has gone well, for the most part. There are the odd bugs, a few of which weren't fixed till an upgrade because Blackboard Support wasn't able to figure them out, but for the most part things are night and day compared to the paper systems before, at least when it comes to organization. Quizzes have been a nightmare as they seem to disappear sometimes, so most folks balk at that and don't use many of the "pedagogy changing" features. We didn't integrate with the registrar's data so inactive accounts have to be cleaned out occasionally. We're strongly considering moving to Enterprise, mainly for the administration features, building blocks, and multiple server capabilities which should make quizzing more stable.
posted by jwells at 5:43 AM on October 20, 2005

There have been at least a couple AskMe threads about Blackboard, a search for those might turn up some information. Here is one.
posted by LarryC at 6:15 AM on October 20, 2005

We're actually coming from the other end -- looking beyond WebCT. Drop me an email and we'll talk.
posted by boo_radley at 7:14 AM on October 20, 2005

Response by poster: LarryC has a good point. There have been a couple of posts about Blackboard and the like, however I thought a broader post about all of the systems would be beneficial. Here are the other ones, which all have a lot of great info:

Do you use Blackboard?

Good examples of "online courses" websites?

Googling for plagiarists? (which is actually asking for the instructor angle on these systems)

Metahomework

Sakai!

Boo: Sounds good. I'll email soon.
posted by jwells at 7:48 AM on October 20, 2005

As a student, I can say that I hate Blackboard with an unbridled passion, as the interface seems to have been designed by people who took the most useful architecture and intentionally inverted it. Like that you can't switch between the tabbish things, or that it has retarded threading.
posted by klangklangston at 8:16 AM on October 20, 2005 [1 favorite]

I don't have direct experience with any products in this sector, given that I haven't been to college in fifteen years, but I own stock in Blackboard so I've followed it fairly closely, and it looks like it's actually one of the best, if not THE best, in terms of product. If there are a lot of people thinking about bailing, though, maybe it's time for me to take my profits...
posted by kindall at 8:20 AM on October 20, 2005

I echo klangklangston's sentiments: Blackboard, from the student perspective, is a POS -- poor navigation, lack of desired features and poor feature implementation. I don't know what the professor's console looks like, but it is either severely lacking, or too hard for them to figure it out. Most of the classes I'm in use a seperate system to post grades, and some avoid using it all together.
posted by fourstar at 8:34 AM on October 20, 2005

From a student's perspective - blackboard isn't intuitive or fun to use... but it's reliable, it works well... but it should be more like metafilter and less like an auto parts database.

I haven't used anything else though- so the claim that it might be "one of the best" could be dead on. Play test. It's your only hope.
posted by ewkpates at 8:34 AM on October 20, 2005

the recent discussion of the merger on slashdot includes little other than complaints about blackboard- but there were a few recommendations for moodle. One of the nice things is that you can just try it out with one or two instructors, or even fake it by replicating existing courses in it, and do a little user testing. (I haven't ever used the products involved.)
posted by wzcx at 8:36 AM on October 20, 2005

I have experience using Course Platform, a piece of technology that was developed by Harvard Business School, and is being deployed throughout the University. It's easy to use, allows you to replicate past courses (i.e., if you're offering the same course over multiple semesters), a fantastic amount of flexibility in look and feel, etc. Some details can be found here. It was first released in 1996, and has had several significant updates since, to the point where it's very, very slick.

Currently, I think they are just using it internally and not offering it for sale, but you can always ask...
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 8:43 AM on October 20, 2005

I own stock in Blackboard so I've followed it fairly closely, and it looks like it's actually one of the best, if not THE best, in terms of product.

As someone working at a publisher who has to integrate course content and functionality with Blackboard, let me just say BA HAHAHHAHAHAHHAA. Blackboard is SHITE, and not just because of their product. Their support is atrocious, to the point of being rude, their documentation is obfuscating to the point that I suspect it is intentional, and their attitude to most of their partners is, "buy our app, do with it what you will, but don't expect us to care or help". I'll take WebCT over them anyday, simply because their employees CARE. The merger news made my heart sink like the first week of November 2004.
posted by spicynuts at 9:17 AM on October 20, 2005

Another negative student's perspective here: I just started using it for an online class and it's absolute junk. Hell, the sidebar takes 30 seconds to load when you're in IE due to it having some kind of stupid activex minimize button (that's on 6Mbps down DSL).

Also: blackboard folks -- it's fucking 2005. Hire some kid to at least pee some design skill onto your pages.
posted by fishfucker at 9:44 AM on October 20, 2005

Also: blackboard folks -- it's fucking 2005. Hire some kid to at least pee some design skill onto your pages.

In all fairness to Blackboard, and lord knows they don't deserve it, their shell is customizable by adopting institutions and I've seen some nicely done designs on the university side. So, some of the blame therer may be placed on your school.
posted by spicynuts at 10:28 AM on October 20, 2005

yeah, I thought that might be the case. Still, the default template should be slightly nicer (unless my school uglified it on purpose).
posted by fishfucker at 11:17 AM on October 20, 2005

This is getting derailed into a "Blackboard sucks" thread (which is understandable, because they do).

But I am also interested in the original question--has anyone used any of the other course management systems? What did you think of them?
posted by LarryC at 12:22 PM on October 20, 2005

As someone who used to be a professional CMS developer/designer and who now attends school at UM, I can say that the interface of Sakai (CTools here) can be a bit confusing and web apps here tend to be light on the UI end. However, in the defense of the developers I imagine the bulk of the effort goes into making something bulletproof - both in terms of not losing data and in terms of not being crackable / gamable by students. The worst thing that can happen to these tools is not that they produce disgruntled students (although they do), but that students could change their grades or violate other academic tenets. I've not heard of any such instances here...
posted by Slothrop at 1:37 PM on October 20, 2005

Actually, let me be more specific. Something that we always worked on with our CMS was making it take as few steps as possible to get some task done. I've found with the old Sakai/CTools (it's been updated this year for UM) a task required too many authorizations, and buttons and form fields were too far apart or too small to be able to work effectively. As a TA, I was often scrolling and clicking many more times than I should have had to. When you're doing essentially the same task for 30 students twice a week, that get's old. I have hardly used the new one, which looks to have an improved sense of consolidating and simplifying tasks.
posted by Slothrop at 1:42 PM on October 20, 2005

Check out the E-learning section in Open Source CMS where you can demo some of the systems and read the reviews.
posted by Sharcho at 2:06 PM on October 20, 2005

Blackboard, as said above, is an utter POS. I've used it on both the faculty side and the student side, and I wouldn't pay five cents for that software.

Moodle is great. I switched from Blackboard to Moodle and it was like night and day. Moodle is generally a joy to work with, though, of course, it's not perfect. It is, however, flexible and well-designed.

In general Moodle's support forums have been pretty helpful. They also offer paid support but I've never had to use it.
posted by litlnemo at 3:29 PM on October 20, 2005

I've used webCT and in my opinion it is a clunky POS. Crap upload interface, crap upload options, counter-intuitive page selection, ugly as a rotten hamster, terrible student management tools, slow slow slow. The BB system was ok but that's in comparison the alternative the university offers: none. The students hated it as well, so far as I could tell.

I haven't used any other course management software though I would like to use a well-designed one.
posted by Rumple at 4:19 PM on October 20, 2005

I apologize for not adding useful info here (I'm effectively bookmarking this thread by leaving a comment), but user/administrator feedback from our community on things like this (in which I have some interest) is pure gold. Don't know where else I could find the like. Thanks.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:19 PM on October 20, 2005

There isn't a good tool out there. Yeah one of the pieces of crap is "the best" but it's still a piece of crap. Moodle is nice but not perfect, BB straight up sucks, I just do not like Sakai much. Rolling your own right now is the only option for a "good" tool. Sorry to have to say it but that's the way it is.
posted by pwb503 at 11:18 PM on October 20, 2005

The biggest time/usability sink is the availability of importable courseware. That's why Blackboard remains the best choice for functions which are being taught elsewhere - you can easily import and export modules.

However, if everything at your college is "blended" - e.g. it's being made to accompany live classes, and therefore needs to be created to specifications - that's different. In that case, the college is going to have to hire some instructional designers, and might want to ask the applicants for those positions what they use and why - that way, you learn as much about the applications as you do about the applicants.

That said, the college SaKai community is the wonderful nice open source one, and though it costs a bundle to join in, you get lots of support and course sharings. So, I'd say:

1) Blackboard (if you want to import modules)
2) Let the Instructional Designer Applicants Decide (and teach you about what works) 3) Try Sakai (if you want to be supported by an Open Source Community and not get locked into company price changes)

I would also say that Macromedia Breeze should be a component of ANY of these, if you are going to do any synchronous DL.
posted by Bram at 4:55 PM on October 22, 2005