Blackboard is the Devil.

This is from an article about teaching history with technology in the AHA Perspectives (subscription only for you non-members):

Course management software was reportedly used by 62 percent of the history faculty in the survey, but these programs were singled out for particular scorn by a number of faculty, both for their clunky interfaces, and frequent upgrades that impose additional burdens in time, effort, and expense. As one respondent observed, “When institutions subscribe to software for teaching such as Blackboard, the software updates often force premature obsolescence on the hardware. The institution and the individual faculty members must either replace costly equipment more often than necessary (with additional costs to the environment), or struggle along with slow hardware. The software “updates” are usually unwieldy, with few real improvements (and often setbacks). They waste valuable faculty time. Such trends should be examined and monitored carefully by the profession.”

I’ve explained elsewhere precisely why I hate Blackboard. However, since I’ve become a devoted ProHacker reader since writing that, I’ll add one thing though: WordPress can serve as a perfectly fine course management system for a lot less money and a lot less hassle.

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