XplanaZine

The Blackboard System Administrators repaired our access to the Academic Web Resources section of Blackboard, so I took a look around. Unfortunately, what I found again confirmed a basic problem at the heart of Blackboard: it does not interact very well with the open Internet (I will give a little sermon on frames tonight)… and it is shockingly commercial. Ignorance is bliss with Blackboard: I actually did not realize that there were all kinds of commercial products being promoted to our students inside Blackboard. Given that SIN, OU’s Sooner Information Network student portal, was just raked over the coals in the April 25 2003 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education for having advertising on its site, I am surprised that the Chronicle did not say anything about all the advertising on university Blackboard sites. I am assuming these ads are not unique to OU, although I could be wrong?
But let’s begin at the beginning…
Last week, I wanted to learn more about what Blackboard offers to instructors, so I tried to access the Academic Web Resources area of our Blackboard site here at OU (I don’t know if you, Dear Reader, can also access this somehow from the Blackboard.com site or not; perhaps they hook up at some point). In any case, a system error prevented me from accessing that site. The ASP engineers at Blackboard fixed this up for us so I can now go to the Academic Web Resources section of our Blackboard system. The Home page of this section explains: “Welcome to the Resource Center, your source for high-quality educational content and information.” Sounds good: I am ready to go (and since I am an Internet-junkie, I am always looking for good educational links).
So, just to check an area that I know well, I went to Languages to see what resources they have listed for Latin and Greek… uh oh, no Latin and Greek. That’s not encouraging. So I try “Other” (sometimes “Less Commonly Taught Languages” show up as “Other”)… nope: no Latin or Greek resources under Other. Their Other category is for general language sites, and one of them looks really interesting: the Evolution of Alphabets! Neat! So I follow this link and end up at a wonderful website created by Robert Fradkin at the University of Maryland. It has animations that show the changing shape of alphabetic characters in cuneiform, Phoenician, Greek, Arabic - wow! It is a great site. I think I will save it as a Favorite… but no! Not so quick! Blackboard does not open up the site in a separate window but keeps you hidden inside the Blackboard site and does not reveal the URL to you so that you can save a site in your Favorites - that is, unless you know the power of the right-mouse, and open the site in a new window. So I backtrack a little, use the power of the right-mouse and am able to save the site as a Favorite.
When your site is free of frames, it is a matter of debate as to whether you should open external sites in a new window or not - I personally think you should open external sites in a separate browser window, just in case the user gets lost, and cannot easily return to your website using the Back button. If you open the site in a new window, they can safely browse the web, and easily return to your site where they left it, even if they close the other browser window (but that is a purely personal choice, about which I have a running debate with one of the web gurus here at OU and I know that Jakob Nielsen would consider this to be a venial or perhaps mortal sin). But when your site has frames - and the entire Blackboard system is built with frames - then you have a much stronger obligation to open links in a new window. Otherwise, folks who do not know the power of the right-mouse cannot save the link as a Favorite. And believe me, I do faculty training sessions where it is regularly the case that a majority of people in the room have never clicked their right-mouse button. They are plenty of folks - exactly the kind of folks that Blackboard is trying to reach here - who are going to stay trapped inside the Blackboard frame and not be able to save these sites as Favorites.
But all is well - I found a nifty site, and saved it as a favorite (having escaped from Blackboard’s frames). I’m still discouraged that they don’t have Latin or Greek listed as a language, but I noticed that they listed Arabic. That is definitely a less commonly taught language! I will go take a look at those resources. Whoops! Blackboard doesn’t have any Arabic resources at all! When you click on the Arabic link, you just get the exact same links that were displayed for “Other”. That is pretty underwhelming. Why do they say they have Arabic resources when they do not? I think I will stick to MERLOT as a starting place for online educational resources.
But just to the right-hand side of this list of links there is an intriguing box of links, which I have reproduced here as a screenshot. Assessment, especially Self-Assessment, is something I am really interested in. I muse for a moment before I click this link - maybe it will give a good annotated list of the places where students can take a version of Myers-Briggs online, like the one at HumanMetrics.com (yes, I am eNFj, surprise surprise). Or perhaps I will find here some inventory of learning skills, like the nice Sternberg-Wagner Thinking Styles assessment you can take at the LDRC. So with these thoughts in mind, I click on the Self-Assessment link. And what do I find? Advertisements for a commercial service named OBIK. Well, there’s a link for Students Enter Here and Instructors Enter Here. This is not promising. I’ll go the student route first. Here’s what I find:

It’s a blast from the past! I wonder if OBIK is still paying advertising fees to Blackboard for this service, even though it is not 2003 instead of 2001. But that doesn’t really matter (for the students anyway: it is not their job to worry about Blackboard revenues). But what does matter is this: OBIK does not offer a single free service to students. The profiles cost $25, $30, and $65. Enough of that. I’ll take a look at the Instructor option just out of curiosity. Nope, nothing free here either: Instructors are offered a “Pro” report for $150.
Well, this is all going to be fairly predictable now, isn’t it? When I click on that “Books” link, it is not going to give me a link to Project Gutenberg or Bartleby.com, it is going to be something commercial. The only question: will it be Amazon or will it be Barnes and Noble? And the answer is… Barnes and Noble! The Documents on Demand link is an ad for… NowDocs. The Live Communication link is… broken (I don’t think I’ll bother to report this broken link to my Blackboard system administrator here on campus). And Test Preparation, well of course, it is a link to Kaplan. Oh and look - I just noticed that there is a whole section called Student Center which I can click on inside this part of Blackboard, separate from the Resource Center itself. I’ll take a quick peek. And it is… more ads. Online Storage from SwapDrive. Tutoring from… SMARTHINKING (”Need help NOW? SMARTHINKING offers you real tutors in real time from wherever you are, whenever you need help. Create your account and receive your FREE half-hour of tutoring now!”). And Research Tools leads to… Xanadu, the course pack people.
Well, this encounter with Blackboard’s Academic Web Resources was even more disappointing than expected. I found no reason whatsoever to come back. And I really wonder about all that commercial advertising! When the Chronicle singled out OU’s Sooner Information Network for its display of advertising, they said: “While advertisements appear on most commercial Internet sites, colleges have kept their Web sites free of ads.” Indeed. But Blackboard wants to be an integral part of our university’s life. And we pay for the privilege. Yet it is full of advertising.
I think we have been hoodwinked. Luckily for us, though, I doubt that any OU student has ever ventured this far into the bowels of Blackboard.