Back in Blackboard

In response to faculty and student complaints about Moodle, the Vermont State Colleges have decided to switch back to the Blackboard learning management system. “We gave Moodle the old college try,” lamented Dean of Academic Computing Eric Sakai, “but we saw the writing on the wall, so to speak,
when we learned that students were mailing each other Post-it notes instead of using Moodle discussion forums.”
Unfortunately, the $1.5 million price tag for re-licensing Blackboard will require some sacrifice from the colleges. The Board of Trustees has directed each VSC president to sell one of its buildings to fund the Blackboard purchase. CCV President Joyce Judy has opted to put the CCV Upper Valley center up for sale and has received expressions of interest from several firms, including the Dollar General chain and Outback Steakhouse.

Moodle System Administrator Tony Harris has submitted his resignation from CCV in protest to the switch. “If it’s not open source, I’m not open for business,” he declared. Harris noted that, due to the incompatibility of the two systems, faculty will need to recreate all course documents in HTML7, the latest version of the markup language used for Web content, which will be available sometime in July. CCV will offer a series of two-hour webinars to assist faculty with preparing their fall 2013 Blackboard courses.