Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Blackboard Application Misleads Students


Blackboard charges schools to run their system and the school provides this service free of charge to students. However, blackboard is trying to tap another revenue stream.
The new Revenue stream is the mobile student who is trying to complete an online course on their mobile devices. Our students are going mobile, and they want everything on their smart phones or iPods.  Many of them have downloaded the Blackboard App which is free to download. This Application is very limited in its capability and is not a sound way to learn.
In the opinion of this author this business practice by blackboard is unethical. First the application can be downloaded for free. After one logs into the system all of the courses are visible to the students. .
 However once a course is selected the application requests payment. For some students this gives the impression that the school is charging them for the material.  If any student is reading this post, please understand the school has already paid Blackboard for the use of their system, and you can access the system on an old fashion PC or a laptop for free.
They try to sell their subscription by promoting various features such as Roam Free which students on iPads and iPods operating on a Wifi network do NOT need.
It is the opinion of this author that we need to look into an alternative Course Management System. At the minimum we need to explain to our students that the school does not receive any of the fees being collected, and possibly many of the features such as quizzes and test may not function in this application.

After taking the above screen shots, I have deleted this application from my mobile device and am looking for alternatives to Blackboard.



No comments:

Post a Comment

All views are welcome. Please do not use foul language.