In The Evolving Role of Course Management System Providers in the Transformation of Education: An Interview with Blackboard's Matthew Pittinsky the co-founder and chairman of Blackboard describes the future of CMS's as an OS for elearning where educators can "incorporate commercial or homegrown applications that meet their specific needs."
While I'm glad to hear that Blackboard is strongly supporting their Building Blocks, an API for creating add-in software modules for Blackboard, at the same time I fear that this may more firmly entrench Blackboard in the elearning platform market. Considering that for the moment, Blackboard and WebCT are the two major CMS's being used at most insitutions, continued expansion of their marketshare will most likely create a monopolistic situation, rather than facilitating new and more exciting elearning products.
And I can't blame Pittinsky. Even though he does seem to show a predilection for pedaogogy which may not be student-centered. For example, in his description of early work on Blackboard, he privileges assessment in his description: ". . . the first generation focused on ease of use and generic tools such as gradebooks, quizzing tools, and the like." After all, it's the administrators who ultimately make the decisions about implemeting proprietary software, and catering to them is the way to sell the product. So I'd rather blame the administration in higher education over the commercial market which is merely responding to them.
I'd like it better, though, if colleges and universities were becoming more involved in open source alternatives and hopefully not getting excited about API's for Blackboard. For this reason, I was really thrilled to see that The Technology Source January/February 2003 issue also includes articles on two open source tools for elearning. Both KEWL and Bazaar sound like the kinds of projects that schools should be spending their money on developing, instead of sinking it into creating modules to plug into Blackboard and the like. Don't they know that open source is cool :)
Re: An Interview with Blackboard's Matthew Pittinsky
This managed system stuff is more and more becoming the focus of my research (though I got to finish the Cool book first!)
Take this quote:
It goes unanswered. And it is one of the more important questions regarding all of these managed systems, which Blackboard is just one.
The learning part never really gets addressed. Yes, there are all kinds of cliche mantras thrown out about interactivity, the new electronic world students will work in etc (and oh so many buzz words). But the product resembles all of the tools of print culture: print texts uploaded (notice all the textbooks Blackboard scans in for a fee), print-based assignments (multiple choice/essay), print-based tasks (grade books).
Here's what they leave out: what can students create with technology?
Oops. Guess they didn't think of that one. And they won't because the teachers themselves don't have the resources to gain enough cultural capital to figure out what is possible. So they'll never let their students either.
Meanwhle, where new teachers work differently with technology - like Charlie referring to open source, and my mantra that UF's NWE was the model for experimentation and intellectual work with technology - the institution shrugs its shoulders and won't believe in the pontential.
Re: An Interview with Blackboard's Matthew Pittinsky
Yep. And he responded to it sort of flippantly:
" Hey, there is nothing wrong with improving "administrivia." That's valuable class time being freed up! In all seriousness, you get from a CMS what you put into it. If you redesign your course, as many participants in the Pew Learning and Technology Program have, you will see results. If you don't, you won't. Carol Twigg's (2002) chapter in The Wired Tower is top-notch on this issue."
You get from a CMS what you put into it. Not that the primary focus should be to design a CMS up front with how it might be used pedagogically for learning, but that it's up to the teachers to make the best of it. This is the implied mantra: It's got plenty of features, if the teacher can't teach with it, it's there fault.
I think, too, I need to read The Wired Tower. My guess is that it probably does accurately represent the direction in which higher education is headed. Pittinsky seems to have those who run higher education pegged pretty well in his product; I can only expect that the book would be very revealing.
Re: An Interview with Blackboard's Matthew Pittinsky
After spending a single semester trying (and discarding) WebCT, I can definitely appreciate the concerns being brought up in this thread. I certainly agree that an open-source model for courseware would be preferable to the proprietary model. On the other hand, there's no denying that these proprietary systems have opened up online educational tools to a much wider audience.
To me, the bigger problem with courseware is not so much that the code is closed-source, but that the course content is. If teachers could freely see and share each others' course materials, then I think most of the disadvanges of CMSs would disappear. Any disagreement?
Re: An Interview with Blackboard's Matthew Pittinsky
No disagreement there. I've never understood why there exists the desire to keep these courses closed to outside viewing; i.e. , why restricted log ins?
Re: never understood why
I would imagine that it has a lot to do with teachers not wanting to open themselves up to that kind of scrutiny.
Re: never understood why
I think you're definitely right about that, Charlie, but you're also right that it's only part of the picture. I think if professors felt more job security--particularly these days when even tenure is being threatened--they wouldn't be so concerned about the scrutiny. How can they feel more secure, though? Unfortunately, I don't think technology is going to make professors any more secure; there's too much concern about a computer taking away one's job. It's a kind of a vicious cycle.
I also think it's difficult for technology educators to tear down the myth of a "teaching machine" without undermining all uses of the computer in the classroom--another vicious cycle.