Blackboard problems raise student concerns

By Cory Anatado
Collegian Staff
January 23, 2008

Reb Yudel seems to be a mild-mannered person. His blog, Blackboard Blues, is short and pithy, containing only six blog posts. However, his impatience with the Blackboard Learning Management System, which La Salle University has implemented, is clear.

“I notice that I only get the Blackboard Blues when I actually try to do something with the program,” he writes. “I forgot the first principle of the Blackboard Learning System: Blackboard sucks.” He writes about seemingly simple scripting of time-sensitive assignments, the inability to customize even the most basic of parameters, and the semantic dissonance between buzzword-happy programmers and the system administrators that loathe them. In these six short blog posts, a bleak picture is painted.

The Blackboard Learning Management System is a set of software applications and server-side programs designed to provide colleges and universities an online learning environment. Blackboard allows professors to post information, host online class discussions, give students their grades, and allow electronic submission of assignments. La Salle has Blackboard implemented, although this implementation is generally unreliable at best. It is not a mandatory technology for teachers to use, but some choose to do so, much to the chagrin of their students.

Chau Nguyen, a junior computer science major, tells of his experience using Blackboard.

“It was slow,” he said.

Having to upload papers and homework for a computer science class and a history class, he noted that he missed an assignment due to Blackboard slowing down and refusing to upload files. Francesca Cupo, a senior DArt major, shares the same concerns.

“I hate [Blackboard],” she says. Only having one professor using Blackboard, she says that she missed both an assignment and a test due to Blackboard’s slowness. Both students were later able to turn in their assignments via e-mail, but lament having to use Blackboard. Maggie Maffia, a senior computer science/DArt major, has further insight.

When asked if Blackboard has any legitimate benefit to La Salle, she said “No, considering that essentially everything it offers is also available (and often used by teachers) in the My Courses tab of myLaSalle,” she said.

A March 29 article from PC Magazine online shares more problems with Blackboard, this time working with Windows Vista.

“Problems with the software’s announcement feature have been reported on some campuses where users with Vista installed are not able to compose any kind of a message with Blackboard at all. Furthermore, there are known compatibility problems with Blackboard and student PCs that use a combination of Vista and IE7.”

In fact, a quick Google search for “Blackboard sucks” brings up 96,000 results. One such result, from community-driven answers Web site MetaFilter has a query from a University of Washington student who asks for criticisms for BlackBoard. One long page later and the perception is unanimous: Blackboard is slow, ugly, clunky and counter-intuitive compared to other web applications; and people just hate using it. Josh Rothman, a commenter on MetaFilter, had this to share:

“I think the unattractiveness of the end product has a lot to do with it. A beautiful course webpage would go a long way as an incentive towards an regularly maintained site.”

There are pros to using Blackboard, such as a second place to store in-class handouts in digital form, just in case, as well as a quick way to find out your grades without having to wait for midterms.

anatadoc1@lasalle.edu