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What to Tell Your Campus About the Blackboard-WebCT Merger
11/1/2005
Ponder the virtue of monolithic systems. We’ve convinced ourselves that the benefits of standardization--for training, help desk, licensing, user experience, scalable hardware--seal the deal on campus standardization. Diversification may be the less risky, less costly strategy--it works with the stock market. Perhaps our student body has reached a level of sophistication that its members can move among several systems, much as they surf and interact in the broad Web environment. Back end interoperability may be enough, coupled with a mechanism to “load balance” based on the future that emerges. Give the faculty choices, some may move the pedagogy more rapidly forward when so endowed.
Look to best of breed in content management, delivery management, and presentation management rather than automatically leave the integration of these layers to the same CMS provider.
Use the disruption in CMS to invest energy in ePortfolio as an alternate, potentially preferred arena focused on student learning rather than course managing. The ePortfolio environment is still highly fragmented and perhaps open to influence not to follow the same path that describes the short history of course management. CMS is moving aggressively into the K-12 environment. Is the organization of education by course needs or by student needs the model we wish to support as the markets consolidate?
Conclusions
In summary, reflect on the issues above and then tell your campus the following about the future of Blackboard-WebCT after the merger, about the future of CMS:
Tell the faculty to preserve and back-up their work on their local hard drives, to responsibly participate in preparation for an unknowable future. Also, tell them that regardless of what occurs, your technology organization will be there to migrate/load next year’s courses.
Tell the IT staff their skills will not go unused. Whether migration, consolidation or change, their skills will be required next year and those that follow.
Tell the administration this technology world is risky business, experimentation at the fringe, in the emergent, is mandatory. The ROI on innovation is delayed, but much like a properly structured annuity pays off at the exit stage of the technology life cycle. The deferred capitalization of myopic focus, and the exit component of the total cost of ownership, escalates with singular commitment. Experimentation is insurance and worth every dollar of investment.
And for all of us: Build the technical environments with an eye toward interoperability. Follow the elegant LEGO model--trains, planes, and buildings (content, interaction, and assessment) all crafted from the same bricks. Read Clayton Christensen’s book on disruptive technologies--and believe it. Practice your balancing act; the next tipping point is hard to predict.
Stephen R. Acker is research director for the Ohio Board of Regents Collective Action Project and associate professor of Communication The Ohio State University.
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