What to Tell Your Campus About the Blackboard-WebCT Merger

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What to Tell Your Campus About the Blackboard-WebCT Merger

11/1/2005

By Stephen R. Acker

What interesting times at Educause, one week after the announced Blackboard-WebCT merger. Most of those involved in running a course management system, any course management system, were reading tea leaves, seeking assurances, reflecting on the plane ride home about what to report to campus. And somewhat ironically, those with the courage of their convictions would have that opinion, any opinion, reinforced in some conversation held along those interminable halls of the Orlando Convention Center.

For example, you could have heard both sides of these arguments:

1. The merger will be a boon to the open source community, providing a forceful rationale for preserving self-initiated pace of change, customization, managed cost, and multi-vendor support platform for innovation. Skeptical WebCT users will move in droves to Sakai and Moodle. (or) The merger is a major set-back for open source, the forthcoming standardization/harmonization between the two market leaders will facilitate content sharing and tool development among schools that use the new Blackboard. Finally, there is the opportunity for higher education to focus on content development and pedagogy.

2. Basic costs will go up more slowly; there is an economy of scale that can be leveraged to reduce the rate of growth in licensing fees. The new Blackboard will grow revenue mainly through volume and BuildingBlocks sales that add value to the core CMS functionality. (or) The two big fish are now one bigger fish; the uncertainty, and the competition, is over. There is yet another bigger fish (e.g., Oracle-Peoplesoft, Microsoft) waiting to consolidate the educational market with the corporate training market. Each phase of consolidation will be accompanied by rapid price escalation.

3. Others in the CMS space (e.g., Angel, Desire2Learn) will redouble their commitment to service--who but their current customers can really sell to the newly disenfranchised? (or) How can relatively small companies resist the urge to divert resources to sales and growth? Service may suffer, but there’s nowhere for the current customer to go so they will stay during turbulent expansion.

And on it g'es; the point-counterpoint continues along many of the dimensions on which you selected your current course management system. Listen long enough and you can be persuaded on either side of the argument—(1) less choice, higher price, straight-jacket interface or (2) more flexibility, slower price increases, customizable user experience.

Even if you yourself see risk in any course of action, what do you say to those on the home campus to calm their concerns? How do you phrase your response to your faculty constituency, looking for direction and assurance that after their Herculean training efforts another change is not upon them? Your staff asks about training, cross-training, benchmarking and where to find the funds and time for such activities when already pressed to the maximum on current implementation needs. Institutional leadership? Most presidents and provosts simply want the problem to go away. There are more pressing matters, like cost containment, a particular interest of Boards of Trustees.