Comments on: What the #Blackboard Acquisition means for Moodle

By: Some may say “Good bye, Elluminate/Wimba. Hello, BigBlueButton” | Moodle News

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:02:10 +0000

[...] What the #Blackboard Acquisition means for Moodle [...]

By: Another thought on the #Blackboard Acquisition and Moodle | Moodle News

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 11:58:54 +0000

[...] What the #Blackboard Acquisition means for Moodle [...]

By: sean lancaster

sean lancaster — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 03:25:15 +0000

as Dennis noted above, i’d love to see BigBlueButton development improve as they’re only at version 0.64 right now. but the product does hold promise and i’d love to see it rapidly start to mature to where it can be competitive with the “new” Blackboard synchronous stuff. unfortunately, i think this move by Blackboard is just going to make it harder for many schools and universities (e.g., mine) to move away from Blackboard because of the total package that they’ve built and the promise of a stable future. i’ll keep my fingers crossed for Moodle, which should be fine. but other competitors (read: for profit competitors) are likely going to see the the end of the line in the not too distant future.

By: John Lawrence

John Lawrence — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 01:41:54 +0000

I am very fearful of this turn of events. I liked Elluminate for its’ open platform, “No User Left Behind”, moderate cost/seat approach. Now that BlackBoard, Elluminate and Wimba are no longer independent competitors, I fear that:
1) The “No User Left Behind” approach will be gone very soon.
2) The cost/seat will rise dramatically within a year.
3) The open platform development will slow to a crawl and it will become a Windows-centric LMS tool.
4) Innovation and integration with other open-source tools such as Moodle will be cut-off.
I certainly agree with Colin Matheson that Blackboard is only looking for a monopoly so that they can do what they want. Having Elluminate and Wimba join forces with Blackboard – Ewwww! Something definitely stinks in here!

By: Denis Zgonjanin

Denis Zgonjanin — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:20:39 +0000

As you said, there’s no reason for Blackboard to continue supporting the Moodle integration. For an open source alternative to Wimba and Elluminate that also integrates with Moodle, check out http://bigbluebutton.org/

By: Joseph Thibault

Joseph Thibault — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 16:25:25 +0000

here's a link to Colin's post http://cytochromec.net/blog/2010/07/the-case-against-blackboard/. Well worth the read for some intelligent background to the world's largest LMS company (based on employees)

By: Colin Matheson

Colin Matheson — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 15:17:09 +0000

This issue has me riled. You can read my post on why I believe Blackboard is bad for education on my blog linked above. The point I want to emphasize is Blackboard is under NO commitment to maintain support for either open plugins for Wimba/Elluminate OR to even continue those as stand alone products. Of course they are all going to say, “We remain committed…” but then they will just change their statement in a few years when people aren’t paying as much attention (Its called spin). Blackboard’s MO is up-selling and vendor lock.
Why buy two companies that do the same thing for 20 times their yearly revenue? To create a monopoly.