Here is from the ISED listserv


Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 19:24:58 -0500
From: Laura Blasi 
Subject: Responses received re: BlackBoard/ WebCT Part I
Reply-To: A forum for independent school educators 
Sender: A forum for independent school educators 


************ one of two***************************

I have had several inquiries regarding my posting a few months ago.  At
that time I asked for feedback from people using BlackBoard or WebCT or
any other course management program.  I  am sharing nine of those
responses from independent schools with the whole list (below), with the
permission of the authors and with all identification removed (affiliated
schools, etc.)  This posting does not express my opinions, nor does it
express the opinions of my school.  Interspersed are my (numbered)
questions.  I hope these insights help, if your school is looking into
making this type of decision.  At this time we are holding off on any
commitment to these kinds of products.  I did not receive any responses
regarding WebCT, even from the contacts that their representative gave me.


Laura Blasi
Academic Technology Coordinator
The Woodberry Forest School

Feedback from nine independent schools
that are using BlackBoard/ WebCT    Dec 1, 2001


School One

There are sites online that allow for the comparison you need.  Our
selection was probably not researched as thoroughly as it would have
been had our bottom line been the same as that of many "virtual
universities."   Some brief answers below: We chose a commercial
product to avoid support issues with homegrown applications.
We reviewed the reports posted by users on various
dist ed lists

2. What has your experience been as an administrator with BlackBoard ?

We are now configuring itÉno problems yet.

6. Were their features
or aspects of BlackBoard that appealed to you over any competitors?

No..I wanted to make sure we had a business relationship with the app
provider.  WebCT may have since gone public.  I haven't followed
their progress.  I didn't want to hire programmers to allow students
to continue to learn!

School Two

Without much research we were at the same point you are at with Blackboard
and WebCT.  What pushed us into the Blackboard camp was another school
experience with support for the faculty.  WebCT did not return calls
and Blackboard did so we made our decision based the support reported by
a colleague.  We set up a new server this summer for Blackboard as per
their
specifications (2 GB of memory for example) and it working fine but we are
currently in the process of planning to train the faculty for a pilot group
to really test the course authoring software.  I have worked with some
students and their first reaction has been very favorable but I have yet to
use the discussion groups and real time chat.

School Three

I would give the BB Level 1 product a B+, BB Level 2 portal a B-/C+, and
BB technical support a D+.

1. Why did you choose BlackBoard ?

We liked the interface that BB had to offer.  The feature set they offered
was comparable to most of their competitors, so we looked at other factors.
BB is the market leader and at the time we were looking they were even
purchasing other competitors, so it seemed like a safe choice.  BB was also
around longer than most of the other companies.  Their support staff is
bigger than other companies and they hours of tech support were longer than
most.

2. What has your experience been as an administrator with BlackBoard ?

The idea that it works "out of the box" is a joke.  We had a very
frustrating first 3-4 weeks with BB, both with the software and BB's
technical support.  They are trying hard at present to completely
reorganize
customer support, but as of this past summer it was terrible.  They left us
hanging on many issues and simply misinformed us on others.  We started
with
BB 5.5..1 and it is still very buggy.  They have promised a new release by
"late fall" of 2001 which will fix a lot of problems.  I felt like I was
their quality control.

3. What have you faculty experienced (positives and shortfalls)?

BB works very well for simple things.  It really is user friendly and takes
very little training.  At first we planned on having training classes, but
because my job is focused on faculty support, I met with faculty members
individually.  First, I could meet when they had time, second, I could
teach
them at their pace, third, I could show them only those features they
needed
and fourth, I could see the bigger picture of how they wanted to use
technology in their curriculum.  Even though it meant a lot of work at the
beginning of the year, if I had to do it all over again, I would do the
same
thing.

4.  Is your school integrating technology across the curriculum?
     If so, how are you aiming for this?

At least one person in every department is using BB to facilitate the use
of
technology in the curriculum, but we do not have an initiative or even plan
to use technology cross-curricularly.

5. And finally, what is the E-mail program you use?

We use Outlook with the Exchange server.  We tried to use the BB e-mail,
but
it never worked.  It still does not work.  They promised a resolution, but
never came through.  Their e-mail solution is a joke.

6. Were there features
    or aspects of BlackBoard that appealed to you over any competitors?

To be honest, it is really hard to compare feature sets unless you use
these
products.  I used both Vista Compass and BB extensively and knew these two
products well.  We knew we did not like Jenzabar even after a short look
because it was created for universities and not suited for high schools.  I
personally liked Vista Compass better, but that company is new and it would
have been a risk to be an early adopter.


School Four
I am afraid it's too soon for me to answer your questions about Blackboard!
I am struggling w/the installation - equipment, software issues, and
interruptions - so we have not yet begun our pilot!

School Five
1. Why did you choose BlackBoard ?
Several of our faculty members had used their free client and really liked
its capabilities

2. What has your experience been as an administrator with BlackBoard ?
Once the setup was completed, administration has been rather easy. The
site has never had any problems and tech support via e-mail is good.

3. What have you faculty experienced (positives and shortfalls)?
The biggest challenge for the faculty is the time factor. Many are
troubled by having to do what they see as wasteful or duplicative work. We
currently require every faculty member to post all homework assignments,
as well as syllabus and required books. They are also expected to develop
a list of web links for their course.

On the good side, those teachers who have looked at it as an opportunity
are seeing some real benefits. The ability to have all materials available
online makes it easy for the students to get what they need at anytime.
They also like the ability of the students to submit assignments via
e-mail through Blackboard as well as use the discussion boards.


School Six
I am VERY DISGRUNTLED right this minute with the lack of support I have
gotten on 2 very challenging and critical technical matters. Their
inability
to help me resolve these issues in a timely fashion has soured what I had
hoped was going to be an exhilerating experience in web-supported learning.
Feel free to share this last comment with the rep; perhaps it will help
spur them along!
I'll hope for a longer, more extended conversation in the near future.

School Seven

1. Why did you choose BlackBoard ?

We were looking initially for a way to provide protected, transcripted
chats for individual classes. When we saw Blackboard's other features, we
liked them too. Our sister school, National Cathedral, had prior experience
with Blackboard; and their recommendation, the chance to use the same basic
software for both schools, and the capabilities of the system made
Blackboard attractive to us.

2. What has your experience been as an administrator with BlackBoard ?

Blackboard has been helpful when we have run into difficulties. If you
serve your own Blackboard site, be sure to have a backup scheme in addition
to the mirrored drives, since you'll want to back up before upgrading. We
also find that we want to buy larger drives for the server. The first
(mirrored) 9GB is filling up fast. My biggest challenge is actually
finding time to encourage and train faculty
to use the system. It is very straightforward, especially with the training
we arranged with Blackboard, but in the "heat of battle" during a school
year, teachers need some support, and training time--even in-house--has
been
hard to come by since September started.

3. What has your faculty experienced (positives and shortfalls)?

Some who went through the training in August needed refresher meetings by
the time the starting rush was over and they had time to devote to it. One
of our history teachers has really used the site for a number of classes. I
use the site both for students and for faculty and organizational purposes.
We have not yet reached the critical mass I hope to see. We hope to use it
a
lot for a new summer program we will start in June.

School Eight

This is our third year of using Blackboard and until this year it has
worked great.  Unfortunately, our web server was attacked by a
virus and we lost all of our informatoin.  We reloaded all the
information and got another virus.  I am not sure of the reasons
and our IT people are trying to figure out what happened.
The reason that we chose Blackboard was because it was easy to use
and allowed teachers to put all sorts of info on it.  I had my students
take
homework quizzes on it every night and they preferred it to writting out
their work.
The faculty found it easy to use and set up their classes until our recent
problem.
It became an important part of the educational process here at Avon and
we have had to make some adjustments lately.
As far as the administration of the Blackboard, it is time consuming at
the end of the summer getting it all set up,
but once it is done there is not much once the students get settled in the
right courses. We have also improved our technology
 in our classrooms by putting multimedia projectors in each classroom.  It
is expensive, but it is well worth it.

School Nine

1. Why did you choose BlackBoard ? Our president saw blackboard somewhere,
liked it and bought it.

2. What has your experience been as an administrator with BlackBoard ?
- Administrating it can be difficult due to limitation of web browsers and
how pages are viewed.  For example, I would like to view a complete list of
users so I can scroll through them to check things out, but am limited to
around 15 users per page.  If I search for a user in a certain way where it
brings up the first 15 and I go to let say number 14 and then I go back
using the programs return button it will not take me back to the list, thus
I have to search again.  Support from blackboard is not all that responsive
either depending on the issue.  ÉI can tell you that there are 3
different levels of the program.  We have the cheaper version at this time.
The more expensive version I believe, you can integrate into an existing NT
domain and use user that are already set up (if that is your situation).
Support also might be better depending on your package level.

3. What have you faculty experienced (positives and shortfalls)?
- This is really our first year in using the software so we are in a
ramping up stage. The teachers that are using it seem to like it.
 I am really not knowledgeable at all on the competitor products.  I do
know that the
Georgia University system does not use blackboard.  I should say that once
all the users are loaded onto blackboard and the teachers courses are set
up and students enrolled in these course administration could be minimal.
At this point we are not there yet.

I should also tell you whatever software you choose to get you need to
decide on
how users will be put in and by this I mean username information.  For
teachers we decided on
firstname.lastname which is how our email is set up and email pas s wo rds.
How to do the students was a bit of a headache.  This can depend on how you
choose to import the students into the software.  With 3000 students
inputting by hand was not an option.  Since this is the beginning of the
program I have some students imported using lastname.firstname, some in as
firstname.lastname and finally using a unique student number as their user
name.  Names are a bad idea because some are the same and dealing with
suffixes was not easy (ie. Jr.,II,etc).  I had to manually manipulate many
names to get them to batch load.  I finally settled on the unique student
number and I will cull out the other names during the summer so next year
will be a bit smoother.