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Unfortunately, it appears as if our tale is the industry standard. I was at the ITC conference in Long Beach a few weeks ago and had the same discussion with several people. It seems as if we all do our best to escape the clutches of Blackbeard and just about the time we think we're free from their grasp, they suck us in again.

The good news about Instructure is that they seem to be digging in their heels and preparing for the long fight. Here's a most excellent blog post from Josh Coates on the topic. Gotta hand it to him, the fella's got a pair of brass cojones. But, Blackbeard has the cash and he who has the cash makes the rules, and time will tell us whether or not those brass cojones are real or if it's all bluster.

Sorry to hear about your struggles with the IT folks at your school. Fortunately for us, our IT folks are actually a very solid team who are ready to work with us regardless of which direction we choose. But our institution lacks the funds and manpower required to support internal hosting of the LMS, so we're stuck with using an external host.

We've been playing around internally with the new Pearson OpenClass platform, but are VERY hesitant to jump into bed with any publisher to such an extent. (The vile textbook publishers are another topic for another day)...

In the end, my fear is that we're going to end up with an interface and system that makes it more difficult for students to succeed. Students can't master the course content when they're constantly struggling with the LMS and/or publisher resources. As Blackborg continues to assimilate the competition, they stifle the growth and advancement of the LMS as a whole, and instead of simplifying things, they get more complicated which in turn hinders student success.

</rant>

<rant>

My institution is in the same boat. We were a WebCT school and then moved to ANGEL shortly after Blackbeard conquered, pillaged, and plundered WebCT. We'd been running ANGEL for a couple of years when, out of the blue, we found that ANGEL had been assimilated by Blackborg.

Blackboard has a tendency to buy anything that appears to be making a positive change in the LMS market. Rather than purchasing these competitors and incorporating the innovations and enhancements into new products, they let the old product sit there as is, make money off of it, and provide occasional inconsequential "improvements" semi-annually (at best). Eventually, when they do release a new product, the "new" product is woefully incompatible with current and emerging web technologies. There is no foresight, no innovation, and no significant improvement in the quality of the product or the support services provided.

Case in point, the fall 2011 release of ANGEL 8.0 introduced support for WebKit-based browsers. Prior to this time, students and faculty using Chrome, Safari, or other WebKit based browsers were screwed. It's one thing to force all our users to install IE or Firefox on their computers, but what do we do about mobile devices? Since mobile devices typically run WebKit based browsers, students (and faculty) can't adequately utilize their online courses from most mobile devices. So much for the iPad in the classroom.

Then there's the Blackboard Mobile Learn app. It's free for iOS users (although it's sorely lacking in functionality) but Android users have to use a specific service provider (Sprint) in order to actually use the app.

Combine these issues with Blackboard's propensity to purchase anything that looks anything like viable competition and you'll get a good idea of the state of distance education in the US. Next up, they'll probably purchase Instructure...

Granted, Blackbeard's new acquisitions don't really have anything to do with everything I just said, but it gave me a chance to get up on my soapbox...

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Totally agreeing with you there. The thing that made the original Star Wars Trilogy so spectacular was not the special effects, but the story. Sure, the special effects were incredible for the time (and are still pretty damned impressive these 30 years later), but a lot of movies using "state of the art" special effects failed to achieve anything near that status and acclaim of any of the original Trilogy films (think Tron). But now it's worse than ever. These days, with the advent of relatively inexpensive CGI effects, directors and producers can focus more on creating dazzling eye candy without paying much attention to the quality of the script. I'm starting to sound somewhat curmudgeonly now, aren't I?

I work as a technology specialist for distance learning in a community college, and when instructors want to put their courses online, a good number of them will simply ask us to convert their PPT presentations to a web-ready format, and they'll do a voice-over which consists of little more than a reading of the slides. Then, they'll post an announcement at the beginning of each week saying, "Read Chapter x, watch the PPT, and take the quiz" and think they're done. This happens with some of our finest instructors. What they fail to understand is that a PowerPoint does not a lesson make. While it was once an innovative tool which could be used to enhance a presentation, PowerPoint has turned into a crutch for those who are too lazy to explore new alternatives. Of course, in education, we also find that many of the instructors are Luddites who are reluctant to use PowerPoint in the first place. But once they start using it, it's a real hard sell to get them to use any alternatives.

Why would we let facts get in the way of paranoia?