3 Things That Blackboard Could Do Better This Version

This post is part of our ongoing Blackboard Week.

We're just asking for a drop of improvement. Awesome photo by flickr user laszlo-photoWhat we've talked about in the other posts of Blackboard Week have not been the most realistic critiques of the system, taking to mind the process of software development. Blackboard, Inc. probably has their roadmap laid out for the next 2 or 3 versions of the system. If they were to take heed everything we've said, they would have to scrap their entire system. Such a task is not realistic, nor is it necessarily the best thing to do.

This post will talk about improvements and refinements Blackboard could make today to make their system more user-friendly.

Tables and Sorting

A documents section currently looks like this inside of Blackboard 9.If one of my professors posts an assignment in PDF form on Blackboard and don't take it upon themselves to sort it, I have no way of knowing what the most recent document posted is. The document system inside Blackboard 9 is quite poor: it doesn't provide much information that's useful to the end-user, the student.

Much of the page is taken up by obvious icons letting me know that there is a file (or several files) rather than a folder. This is the bulleting method used by the system. The bullets don't make much sense, since many things my professors upload--such as PowerPoints--are not documents. Also, multiple documents uploaded do not show as a multiple document icon. No biggie, but just a minor thing.

What the documents do lack is any sort of context. I will not be able to glean much from the file size of each document (except for how many pages I might need to read). I should be able to see dates created, dates uploaded, number of pages/slides in the document, icons that reflect the file formats and maybe even the author of the documents. I should also be able to sort by each one of these attributes.

If someone at Blackboard doesn't feel like doing this, expose the data and I'll write a Greasemonkey JavaScript table-generator. I don't care.

RSS/Atom Feeds

While not widely adopted, RSS is cool and could also help internally organize the Blackboard system. (Quick RSS tutorial: rather than visiting Web sites, the Web sites visit you. Watch this video for a more in-depth explanation.)

Rather than having to log in to Blackboard and click around for each class, it would be nice to get a digest feed of every activity regarding the classes I'm taking. That way, I just have to glance at my feed once a day to see if anything's new. That takes a few seconds, as opposed to the few minutes wasted navigating through the system.

In the world of digital media, choice is key. While a majority of the users out there probably wouldn't check up on their classes via RSS, it costs Blackboard nothing (aside from developer costs) to provide. Given my experience at companies that use RSS internally, it can also be a huge asset to organization and extensibility of information inside the company.

Don't show me modules that aren't enabled

Look at all of these things I can't use!While I would love to know everything that Blackboard can do, don't display things to me if I can't use them. That only makes me jealous of other classes. But seriously, it doesn't make much sense.

Apple could display to me rocketship controls inside of my System Preferences, but that doesn't mean my MacBook will be flying me to the moon any time soon. Superfluous controls are superfluous.

This is probably the most minor out of them all (it's not inhibiting productivity during my time using the system), but it would be a simple fix:

for (tool in tools) {
  if (tool.enabled())
    tool.display();
}

There, I did it for you.

These are all pretty simple things that might take someone a few days to implement. Do you have any other simple ideas? Let us know in the comments!

Comments

[BbAdmin]

Assuming your system administrator has it enabled, the daily digest feed already exists in the form of the "What's New" module on the home page.

[JawnZ]

Yes, but the daily digest on the "What's New" module still requires me to login to the website, instead of just look at my RSS reader is which is open all day and constantly giving me new information.

I agree with most of your posts here about blackboard, I just hope soemone is paying attention. These improvements would earn them huge points with the students, and probably with the staff as well. I remember switching from Blackboard 4 to 5 in high school, and thinking "this software is STILL crap!"

My college's install of blackboard is pretty bad, but my girlfriend's install at her college is much better...instead of being a standard, it's up to the schools to try and improve on broken software. not a great business model.

[BbAdmin]

Even if the application is rock solid, a school's configuration will be the deciding factor on the experience for the end-user. An operating system, for example, may work flawlessly. But if the person doing the install doesn't know how to install the necessary drivers properly, there will be problems. Blackboard on the whole is not broken. 9.9 times out of 10, it comes down to the configuration expertise of the system administrators and the course configuration and usage by instructors.

I agree that changes can be made for everyone's sake. There is always room for improvement with anything, technology related or otherwise. I, myself, would also like to see RSS added and more sys admin options. All of this aside, it ultimately rests in the hands of your system administrators to make these suggestions and report known issues. I think Blackboard versions 8 and 9 have been steps in the right direction from the days of 4 and 5.

[Kelly Sutton]

@BbAdmin

I would say that's a fundamental problem in the software. Take any mature open source project out there (e.g. Apache) and you'll see that things have definitely favored a convention over configuration approach recently.

Sure, I could configure my max_timeout on install, but 30 seconds is just fine for 99.9% of the users out there. Apache installs easily and is online quickly, and probably runs on more platforms than Blackboard could ever hope to run on.

Knowledge of required drivers should not be a requisite for software installation. Is this 1995? We developed virtual machines and byte-code interpreters for a reason.

[BbAdmin]

Yes--and we've also developed biofuels, nuclear power, and favor renewable energy, but our cars still run on gasoline like they have since 1900 and we still heat our homes with propane and natural gas.

If the fundamental problem is the software, what explains the fact that some institutions have Blackboard running in a completely stable environment with very few problems? In the last six months, we've only had two "major" system outages, both of which resulted in Blackboard being offline for ten minutes or less. One was the result of a database lock and the other was the result of someone deciding to unplug something in the datacenter. Our virtual machines haven't been restarted in three months and our fail-over configuration allows us to be back online in seconds in the event of a hardware failure. How many universities running Moodle can say the same about their reliability?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not absolutely in love with Blackboard. I don't own stock in the company and do not take criticisms of the program personally. I'm simply saying that the overall experience of the program comes down to configuration, regardless of what has been favored recently in the field.