XplanaZine

As someone pointed out to me after my observations about Blackboard yesterday, there is a new version of Blackboard out. So it is not really fair of me to take excerpts from the Blackboard manual from the previous version of Blackboard - I need to take a look at Blackboard where it is today. Agreed! So the first thing that I did was to click on the Academic Web Resources button on my Blackboard homepage, and I received this error message:
An Exception occurred!
Message:
java.lang.NullPointerException
Stack Trace:
java.lang.NullPointerException at com.blackboard.scholar.data.SubjectArea.getChildrenSubjectAreas(SubjectArea.java, Compiled Code) at … [it goes on like this for a very satisfying 20 lines or so).
Now I don’t want to dwell on this error for the wrong reasons (things break all the time, and they get fixed). But what is interesting about this error is that I can imagine that I am perhaps the first person on this campus to have ever pressed that button. It’s probably been broken all semester long, and perhaps even all year long. And nobody even noticed. Why? Because Blackboard has done nothing to make the instructors, much less the students, on this campus turn to Blackboard to find out about “Academic Web Resources.”
But I am undaunted! I’ll go instead to the Blackboard website and see what I can learn there. Here is the person who greets me at Blackboard! I wonder who she is. I think she is supposed to be a teacherly type. She is wearing glasses after all. Although in her Corporate/Government incarnation she is not wearing glasses. The glasses are definitely a teacherly thing. She tells me that “Blackboard has had a very positive impact on our educational environment.” These words are in quotes, as if a real person spoke them. As if our teacherly friend spoke them. But who is she? Who spoke these words? I do not know. But I can learn more: I can mouse-over my teacherly friend. And her alt-text tag tells me: “Blackboard is a sound technology investment that delivers educational and economic returns.” Well, it’s a good thing I moused over her. Otherwise I might have just thought that Blackboard is educational. Thanks to the power of mousing over her, I know it is a sound economic investment too. (Now I won’t know that if I have this adventure in Netscape 7, since Netscape 7 does not believe in using the alt-text tag for mouse-over tooltips - well, lucky for Blackboard I’m using Internet Explorer tonight.)
There’s not a clear link here on the front page for “Teachers” or “Students”, but there is a button for Higher Education, and a separate one for K-12. I’ll try Higher Education. My teacherly friend is gone now, but I’m on the Vision page (I click the Vision button just to make sure). Here’s the Vision:

A compelling vision for the future of the educational enterprise is beginning to emerge. Through the pioneering advances of our Blackboard client-institutions in U.S. higher education, we have seen the role of IT in education become increasingly strategic and central to the core mission of an institution – advancing educational outcomes, institutional strategic objectives, and meeting increased constituent expectations.
Well, that does not say anything to me as a teacher. It certainly does not say anything to students. If I were not so persistent, I would probably give up right now - teachers are clearly not the intended audience for this website.
But it looks like I’ve got two possible choices here - there is a “Learn More” link next to the Learning system, where I happen to notice the words “teaching and learning”. So maybe I am getting warm. Oh look - over to the right-hand side, there is a link to “The Wired Tower”, which is a collection of essays by Blackboard Chairman (!) Matthew Pittinsky about “academic e-learning.” Well, that is tempting too. I think I’ll take the Wired Tower and read some essays by Matthew Pittinsky. So I click the “Learn More” link… uh-oh, what’s happened? I’m at amazon.com, and they want to sell me a copy of this book. The list price is $34, but I can get it at amazon.com for $23.80. Is this for real? I really thought I was going to get to read some essays online here. Too bad.
I’ll go back to the “Learn More” link for the Learning System. I wonder what will happen this time. Maybe my teacherly friend will come back, and I will find out where “”Blackboard has had a very positive impact on our educational environment.” Here goes…
I click on the “Learn More” link for the Learning System. My teacherly friend does not come back. But I get a new Vision statement. Here it is:

The industry’s most widely deployed teaching and learning environment, the Blackboard Learning System features a robust environment for content management and sharing, online assessments, student tracking, assignment and portfolio management, and virtual collaboration. The Blackboard Learning System provides enterprise-critical course and learning management functionality that is designed to foster widespread adoption, integrate seamlessly with enterprise administrative systems and authentication protocols, and, through Building Blocks architecture, provide an extensible environment for customization and interoperability.
Oh man, I cannot believe these guys are for real. I am sort of interested in Blackboard’s promise to help me do content management, and virtual collaboration sounds cool. But what is all this enterprise-critical course and learning management functionality that is designed to foster widespread adoption? Uh, what about me and my students?
I scan down the rest of the page to see if it gets any better… industry leading course management system… third-generation enterprise technology platform…
re-architected assessment management system … robust enterprise system administration … data management … identity management and authentication systems … virtual installations … extension and integration of the platform.
Okay, I work for an IT department. Sad to say, I actually understand what all of this crud means. But I am also a teacher: and as a teacher this means nothing to me. And I think I am going to give up and go away from this webpage now.
If this sounds petty, I apologize - sort of.
Think about it. Blackboard has taken millions of dollars of university funds, “Blackboard Reports Revenues of $69.2 million for 2002″ as the front page tells me. And Blackboard has spent that money to build a teaching and learning tool that falls far short of every expectation that I would have as a teacher. Maybe it meets the enterprise-level concerns at my school - but as I have told my boss at work many times, “Enterprise is a starship”. Teachers and students are not looking for enterprise-wide solutions. They want solutions for teaching and learning; it’s a personal thing that happens inside an enterprise. And which also just happens to justify the very existence of that enterprise.
Now when I went back to the front page to get the specific dollar figure for Blackboard’s revenues, I noticed that the content of the front site changes when the page is refreshed. So I’ll give this one last try. This time a different teacherly person pops up to greet me. She is an older woman, but she is still teacherly - see the glasses she is holding in her left hand? This time she tells me “Nothing has so positively transformed the educational environment than the use of Blackboard in our school system.” Well isn’t that nice? I wish I knew who she was and what school system she works in. Let’s see what happens when I mouse over her. Ah, the more things change the more they stay the same. The tooltip still says “Blackboard is a sound technology investment that delivers educational and economic returns.”
I’m going to hit the refresh key a few times just to see what other teacherly friends I have at Blackboard. Maybe I’ll even have a student friend if I press the refresh key often enough. Nope, no student friend yet - but here is a teacherly friend. And I don’t even have to mouse-over him, he tells me outright: “Blackboard is a sound technology investment that delivers educational and economic returns.” Nothing ambiguous there. He says what he means. He’s wearing glasses AND he has rolled up his sleeves, ready to work. And look, the fun never stops. Sometimes my teacherly friends with their glasses come back and tell me other things about Blackboard when I hit the refresh button: “Blackboard solutions have become vital applications throughout our organization.” - “Blackboard offers all of the mission-critical applications for building today’s digital campus” - “Blackboard allows me to communicate with my students more frequently and more effectively” (that’s good! the first time that the word students has appeared on the website so far) - okay. I think that’s it. So much for my adventure in Blackboard Wonderland. I cannot say that I came to this website expecting to find a community of teachers - nothing about using Blackboard makes me expect that I would find anything even vaguely like that.
But I did try.
I would have liked to hear at least one story, one account, from somebody somewhere using Blackboard to teach, from a student who thinks Blackboard is a really cool place to learn. But the only human words I have heard so far on this website are in the quotes from my teacherly friends on the front page. I am 99% certain that my teacherly friends come from a package of professional photographs for use in building websites. And I still don’t know where the quotes come from.

Postscript (April 30 2003):

When visiting the Blackboard website for another article, I found that the model used for the Corporate/Government section of the menu has been changed. It is no longer the nice teacherly lady with her glasses taken off. It is now another nice lady, without glasses, whose face is oddly illuminated with bars of light - I guess it is light shining through Venetian blinds. I wonder what that is supposed to suggest? Well, you can take a look for yourself in this screenshot.

Post - Postscript (June 2 2003):
Although nothing substantial has changed at the Blackboard site (Pittinsky’s book is still $23.80 with no free sample forthcoming), they really are struggling with their Corporate/Government identity. They have now found a lady who looks altogether much happier and less imprisoned than the April-May lady. I wonder if this one will last out the summer. She looks very happy.