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Advertising. This whole page reads like it was copied from the company's "About:" page. User:Zoe| (talk) 22:42, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
Questionable Edit. I had put the following paragraph at the close of the article to counter the advert tone of the article, only to have it removed by a new user with no explanation. I would rather get a discussion of why this was removed than do an automatic revert - what do people think? And, with the paragraph below, could we remove the advert tag? User:Dialectric June 20, 2006 quote: - Moodle and the Sakai Project are open source alternatives to the Blackboard Academic Suite. These projects grew out of a need for a low cost, high flexibility course and content management software, and are supported by universities and system administrators who see the high cost of purchasing and administrating Blackboard products, and the closed source nature of those products, as significant drawbacks.
Desire2Learn lawsuit. Cleaned up this text. Added and fixed details. Added info on the Moodle organization's efforts to publicize the lawsuit. Reorganized the page - seems to look cleaner now. Cheers. -- dilettante 23:00, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
-- 141.156.144.132 23:58, 17 August 2006 (UTC): Bb/Scholar360 Comparison. Removed the Bb-Scholar360 comparison link in External Links section. This comparison was marketing material created and hosted by Scholar360, not by a neutral third party.
The article currently states "Blackboard Collaborate launched in July 2010.". More research needed, but I think it's more accurate to say "Blackboard announced an acquisition of Elluminate in July of 2010. Their flagship product, Elluminate Live!, then became the foundation for Blackboard Collaborate". (e.g. http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2010/07/05/daily39.html) dwarring 29 August 2012
Was it a lawsuit or just a complaint? -- Gbleem 03:43, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Here is my layman analysis of the Blackboard patent. Patent here: [ [1]] The key to this patent is two-fold: first, a MEANS to ASSIGN a level of ACCESS to EACH data file based on the user's role (i.e., student or teacher); second, this means to determine whether access is warranted, and to control the data file. To break this patent, that is, to work around it (avoid infringement), you simply have to design a system that does not ASSIGN to EACH data file a level of ACCESS, nor determine whether access is warranted. How to do this? Easy. You simply allow each student and teacher to access a shared DIRECTORY (folder) rather than a file. Another workaround, since the patent covers server-client networks, is to have a "peer-to-peer" network, like gnutella or edonkey. Finally, you can simply fight the patent in court (which one company is doing). Now this workaround only avoids direct infringment--the patent holder can argue of indirect infringement as well. Also, it may not be technically possible to implement this workaround. For this reason, it might make more sense to try and invalidate the patent in court. Language from the patent here: "means for assigning a level of access to and control of each data file based on a user of the system's predetermined role in a course; means for determining whether access to a data file associated with the course is authorized; means for allowing access to and control of the data file associated with the course if authorization is granted based on the access level of the user of the system.
The link alleging close ties between Federated and the Republican party appears to go to a strongly partisan web site. To maintain NPOV, it would be better to justify the claim that "some of the Donahues are among the biggest individual donors to the Republican National Committee and to the Bush family" with a link to a better source, such as the Federal Election Commission.
Update: I went back and added POV-check-section to this section. It seems like there are a lot of unsourced/questionably-sourced, and perhaps non-NPOV compliant statments in there.
-- 141.156.144.132 12:34, 17 August 2006 (UTC): Oh man, this "Blackboard's ownership" section is conspiracy theory at its best. It's drawn word for word from this blog post.
The blog is written by George Roberts aka Wikipedia user, User:Peaceful, who added the "Blackboard's ownership" section to the Wikipedia entry.
When you google around, it's pretty clear that Roberts is spinning an undocumented conspiracy theory. Examples:
His comments on this blog post: "Blackboard’s major shareholders include Federated Investors, the Carlyle Group and Oak Hill Capital Partners. These firms are very close to the Whitehouse and are among the biggest corporate and individual donors to the Republican Party and the Bush family. Although I usually Favour cock-up to conspiracy, the Bb patent skirmish is, maybe, an important little battle in the hearts-and-minds war."
This post from his blog: "With Federated, Carlyle and Oak Hill all in the Bb shareholders club along with Bill Gates, Microsoft and Pearson, Blackboard might be seen as a bit of a darling. So, the question becomes why on two fronts: why Bb, and why the patent and litigation route? Is it that Bb's behavior (or the behavior of the company's principals) makes it attractive to big-time buccaneering neocons, or is the company being gently encouraged in this direction by its owners? And/or is there another angle to be explored? One to do with shaping the tools and, because of the nature of the VLE/LMS toolkit, shaping the institutions that shape the minds that make the world what it is?"
Another one from Roberts: "Blackboard provides a means towards control of the curriculum should someone want to. The patent application was, possibly, late dot-com chutzpah. Its subsequent deployment strikes me as strategic and in line with neoconservative affinities. In fact, the patent pending status must have been one of the reasons Microsoft and the venture capitalists backed Bb in the first place. Should the patent not have been granted they could have quietly sold up."
None of these assertions are documented. This is not the kind of stuff that belongs in Wikipedia.
" This is not the kind of stuff that belongs in Wikipedia."
I have to agree. To be credible, the author would need to demonstrate that a) Blackboard has significantly more institutional investors than similar publicly held coporations (possible, but unlikely) and b) that those institutional investors were significantly more "Republican" than the norm for such groups (seems implausible; investment bankers, venture capitalists, and the like tend to be rather Republican as a general rule).
Otherwise, it does look like partisan conspiracy mongering. I don't see Microsoft investing in Blackboard as particularly noteworthy; they have their fingers in a lot of pies (e.g., Microsoft has also donated money to Moodle, a GPL course management system). Unless this section can be justified with links to credible sources, it should be deleted.
It's sad that there is a certain demographic that seems compelled to climb on their favorite political hobbyhorse, regardless of the nominal subject under discussion. Not everything involves a Bush conspiracy, just as not everything involved a Clinton conspiracy back in his day. I find partisan screeching of any stripe less than useful. Keep it on your blog, not in Wikipedia.
BTW, I'm not a Republican (or a Democrat), and I think Blackboard's recent actions are morally repugnant and will, in the long term, prove to be a financial disaster for the company. What were they thinking?
I see someone cleaned this up and got rid of most of the over-the-top stuff, but I still question whether it's noteworthy at all. Firms like Morgan Stanley invest in thousands of different publicly held corporations (they hold positions in 4,566 different companies as I type; their $44 million investment in Blackboard doesn't show up until you get to the 34th screen of the list, so it's very small by their standards).
Also, any list of this nature is practically guaranteed to be outdated almost before it's entered. Unless someone can provide a clear reason why institutional holdings in Blackboard are of particular interest, this entire section should be deleted.
The investments by Microsoft and Pearson Publishing are significant. Blackboard has a well-documented history of collaboration with Microsoft, which to a large extent makes them representative of Microsoft's presence in e-learning. Additionally, Blackboard has documented agreements with publishers and is a means of marketing commercial product to clients.
I work in the field of educational technology at a univeristy. Not to support conspiracy theories, but there the discussion about 'who owns the content' isn't just about culling learning materials for free. There is a legitimate fear from professors of being blacklisted for having liberal views. Perhaps that is connected to what you are discussing. This blog tells the story and it would be easy to dig up legitimate news sources. I remember reading about these instances as they happened. http://www.theinquirer.net/images/articles/blackboard.pdf
IF Bb is involved in such a scheme, that will be the end of their business. Campus are running from Bb due to high prices and this patent crap. I was a local hero for migrating my univeristy off Bb. Computerhag 14:45, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
138.88.67.103 20:30, 2 September 2006 (UTC) Removed the Blackboard Ownership section. It was flagged weeks ago and no one has stood up and said that it should stay. The closest was the guy who said the investments by Microsoft and Pearson are significant.
The intent of the person who originally posted this section was conspiracy-mongering, i.e. trying to imply that the Blackboard patent controversy represents some kind of attempt by Republican/conservative to "shape the minds" of children by . . . what? By investing in a company and then somehow forcing the company to be successful and then strongarming the company into filing a patent that takes six years to be granted so that they can then . . . what? Blackboard *still* doesn't determine the content of the university courses that are delivered on its software. Does this George Roberts guy think that Bb has subliminal messages embedded in their logo or something?!? It's really just preposterous.
I looked at a dozen or so other Wikipedia articles on public companies and didn't see any that listed out the company's major investors. There doesn't seem to be any merit or purpose to having this section in the article.
I think this article should be here -- 69.250.70.141 03:15, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Does anyone have any objection to removing the neutrality flag? The article seems neutral to me - dialectric
Questionable Edit. I had put the following paragraph at the close of the article to counter the advert tone of the article, only to have it removed by a new user with no explanation. I would rather get a discussion of why this was removed than do an automatic revert - what do people think? And, with the paragraph below, could we remove the advert tag? User:Dialectric June 20, 2006
Forum Shopping. I'm really surprised this article doesn't mention forum shopping, or am I the only one who initially thought that Lufkin, Texas was an odd venue for Blackboard to pursue its patent lawsuit? It took a couple of minutes before I remembered something about east Texas being a very, uh, "popular" place for pursuing these kinds of suits. Unless someone can suggest a different and credible reason why Lufkin would be chosen, I think this article deserves a mention of the topic. Anon July 3, 2007.
Why is this article so absorbed in the litigation stuff? It seems really unbalanced, given how little actual information about Blackboard's products is provided. Back to Google, I guess.
Product information does not belong in Wiki unless it is truely notable. Legal stuff appears to be the main reason why the company is significant -- as its impact on clients, other companies, and the US patent system for software patents is noteworthy. Bw022 ( talk) 20:34, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Blackboard is not SCO. The fact that the two have similiar noteable legal issues does not mean that they have similiarly noteable products. SCO had considerably more than 2200 installations. I fail to see how they are noteable. Bw022 ( talk) 00:13, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
Coursesites is a service being advertised by Bb . . . does anyone know any more about it? How does Bb make $$ from it? What about the intellectual property issues so very much ballyhooed throughout the discussion pages? Really. Could someone please put some info up on WPedia about it?
Coursesites is their free demo of the learning management system "Learn". According to the terms of use, the usage is free limited access for non-profit users. Profit usage is only allowed for customers having licened a Blackboard product for the purpose to trial and develop. Coursesite preview capability is important for the majority of users running the old interface now called "Original Experience". Coursites allows to testdrive Learn with the new "Ultra experience" user interface . -- Telcoach ( talk) 10:12, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
No question, this article requires a lot of work before it conforms to Wikipedia's guidelines, and I plan to do just that. I rolled back a spot of vandalism to the article recently and have just added it to a handful of relevant WikiProjects, but before I go any further I should disclose that I have a financial relationship with Blackboard Inc. Ever mindful of abiding by Wikpedia's conflict of interest provisos, I'll make sure all direct edits to the live article are non-controversial, and I'll first seek consensus in proposing more substantive changes. If you see this note and are interested in helping to improve the page, please join in. Cheers, WWB Too ( talk) 18:52, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
It's been a while since I posted here to say that I'd be working on improving this article, but in that time I've put together a completely new draft as an intended replacement for the current article. My draft addresses all of the problems with the current version, particularly with regard to missing or outdated information, weak structure of sections and over-reliance on lists.
In the proposed draft, I have:
As much as possible I have used third-party sources to provide reliable sources for information in the article, however in places I've also used Blackboard's website to verify straightforward details, such as dates of acquisitions.
For anyone who may have this page watchlisted, please take a look at this draft and let me know if you have any feedback, or if you think this would be OK to move into place as is. If you think the draft mostly represents an improvement but have some small edits to suggest, I would recommend that the draft be moved into place and then any edits can be made or discussed. If there is no response here, I'll seek feedback on relevant WikiProjects, but if after a week or so there are no serious disagreements, then I'll probably move it.
Note also that in my userspace draft, I have commented out the company's non-free logo and disabled categories as well. These will need to be restored if and when this new draft goes live. Cheers, WWB Too ( talk) 15:16, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
The whole section has no sources! the last sentence is certainly not encyclopaedia worthy: "Blackboard's near-monopoly in the internet education suite has seemed to slow their innovation in the products, and it shows."...i'm a noob, but should that part at least be removed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.26.85.6 ( talk) 13:35, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
I hate to remove material critical of a product, but I cannot find sources for anything in this section. I will tag it, and see what other editors do. Wikfr ( talk) 03:37, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered. |
A year and a half ago, I worked on a new draft for this article to address problems with the article at the time (you can see the details of this above). Since then, some aspects of the article have become outdated and an editor has expressed concerns that details in the article read as promotional, leading to the addition of the warning tag at the top of the article.
As I disclosed in 2011, I am again working on behalf of Blackboard Inc. and seeking to improve the article, particularly to bring it up-to-date and address the warning tag. I have moved the article into my userspace and made some edits to update the material, address the promotional material per notes from the editor ( User:DGG) who added the tag. As that editor is busy and has not been able to get back to this, I'd like to invite other editors to review the article draft in my userspace and see if it addresses the issue flagged by the tag on the article.
The user space draft is here: User:WWB_Too/Blackboard_Inc._(2013_revision)
To summarize the main changes that I've made:
If editors here feel that the version in my userspace is an improvement and addresses the tag on the article, can someone move this version live and remove the tag? (Please note I have disabled the categories and non-free logo in my draft; these will need to be re-enabled if moved over.) I'm open to any further suggestions for improvements or if there are any questions about the draft version I've worked on, please let me know. Cheers, WWB Too ( Talk · COI) 13:09, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
In the current, recently added Criticism section, only one of the sources is a reliable independent source: the TechCrunch article. One source is a website that collates information from social media sites ( Amplicate), and the other is blog post on a website focusing on offering tips for college students ( HackCollege). I've focused my revision just on the criticism from the TechCrunch article, which offers an opinion on the "feature creep" in Blackboard's learning management software. I've added this into the Blackboard Learn section, since the criticism is about the software. Although the source doesn't specifically mention Blackboard Learn, the criticism is clearly about the company's learning management software. With these changes, I think my full draft ( here) now addresses this material properly. Cheers, WWB Too ( Talk · COI) 22:09, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
Hi, a few weeks ago I helped to create an article for Blackboard's co-founder and former CEO Michael Chasen. I'm reaching out here to see if anyone would be able to add in a wikilink to this article, linking where Michael Chasen is mentioned in this article to the newly created article. Though I feel like this is an appropriate, neutral edit to make I'll refrain from doing so myself, since I have a COI: my work on the Michael Chasen article was on behalf of his new company, SocialRadar. As with all COI projects I work on, I like to avoid direct edits to live articles. (In the interest of full disclosure, I'd like to note that I work with WWB Too who offered a new version of this article for review recently.)
As Chasen's full name is only used in two locations in this article — once in the introduction and once in the Early history section — I would suggest adding a wikilink to both of these occurrences, though I'm open to other suggestions. Thanks in advance for reviewing this. I'll be keeping an eye on this talk page so please reply here if you have any questions or can help with this small edit. 16912 Rhiannon ( Talk · COI) 00:47, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered. |
Hi folks, I've been asked by Blackboard to request some updates to a few areas of this article, as there have been some changes at Blackboard recently. Because I have a financial COI, I will not be making any direct edits to the article. Instead, I'll propose the updates here on the Talk page so other editors can review them and then implement them if they look okay. I should also note that I am a colleague of editors 16912 Rhiannon and WWB Too, who have posted here previously.
References
References
I may be back with some additional update requests later, but I hope an editor can take a look at these in the meantime and, if they look okay, go ahead and implement these changes. Let me know if you have any questions! Cheers, ChrisPond ( Talk · COI) 14:51, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered. |
Hi to anyone watching this page! Blackboard has made several new acquisitions this year and has undergone significant changes to the company and its products since this article was last updated. To help bring it up-to-date, I've been working on behalf of Blackboard to prepare some edits to this article. Some editors may remember me from a previous message here about adding a wikilink to the Michael Chasen article. This time around, I'm requesting changes to the infobox and introduction, and the addition of a new subsection to the Products and services section. I'm also working on some larger suggestions for the History section that I will share later.
I've revised the introduction to include a few updates. Blackboard's CEO, Jay Bhatt is currently not mentioned at all. What do other editors think about adding the sentence: "The company's CEO is Jay Bhatt, who has led Blackboard since October 2012" following the first sentence? Additionally, the last sentence of the introduction is a bit outdated. I found some more recent stats from 2014 that can added. The slightly reworked introduction is below:
References
In July, Blackboard announced that it would be offering its products in scalable packages called "solutions." This is a big shift from its previous model of licensing individual products. I've drafted a short subsection covering the basics of this change to follow the other sections in Products and services. The draft, as well as the markup are below.
References
Along with the change to the Products and services section, the infobox "Products" field should also be updated to include these new solutions. The Higher Ed and K-12 solutions are as follows:
Learning Core
[1]
Learning Essentials
[1]
Learning Insight
[1]
Learning Insight & Student Retention
[1]
Common Core
[2]
Innovative Classroom
[2]
Open Learning
[2]
Parental Engagement
[2]
K-12 Central Mobile App
[2]
TipTxt for Anti-bullying
[2]
The infobox currently only mentions Jay Bhatt under Key people, but the article mentions several more staff members that could be included. I'd like to suggest the following people be added to this field: Bill Davis (Chief Financial Officer), Mark Strassman (Senior Vice President of Product Management), Gary Lang (Senior Vice President of Product Development), Katie Blot (Senior Vice President of Education Services), Tracey Stout (Senior Vice President of Marketing).
As I have a conflict of interest, I will not make any of these changes myself. Instead, I hope an editor here will review these requests and make the edits if they agree with them. Thanks for taking a look. 16912 Rhiannon ( Talk · COI) 20:21, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
Hi again. As promised, I've returned with a few more updates for this article. These are more significant edits than last time and include new drafts for two sections. The first is for the History section. It's been a few years since the majority of this section was written, so it's in need of some maintenance. For instance, it includes a Recent expansion subsection that covers details that are no longer recent. I retained much of the wording and information in the current draft, but re-evaluated how the information is grouped. The new draft divides company's history into three sections: Early history, Expansion and buyout, and New leadership. The New leadership section includes the most new information and focuses on Blackboard under Jay Bhatt. I also trimmed down the details about individual acquisitions throughout, which I'll explain the reasoning for further down (though you can probably guess from this Talk section heading!). The text and markup for the new History section is below:
Blackboard Llc. was founded in 1997 by Michael Chasen and Matthew Pittinsky and began as a consulting firm contracting to the non-profit IMS Global Learning Consortium. [3] Chasen and Pittinsky started Blackboard upon leaving KPMG Consulting where they both had worked as part of the company’s Higher Education practice. [4] In 1998, the company merged with CourseInfo LLC, a small software provider that originated at Cornell University and was founded by Daniel Cane and Stephen Gilfus. [4] [5] [6] The combined company became known as Blackboard Inc. The first line of e-learning products was branded Blackboard CourseInfo, [7] until the CourseInfo brand was dropped in 2000. [8] The product was initially given to teachers for free to try out and then was licensed to schools. [9] The new company made a profit in its first year, and its sales in 1998 approached US$1 million. [4] Other early products included Blackboard Classroom and Blackboard Campus. [10]
By the late 1990s and early 2000s, the company had become the leading learning management system [11] This expansion was initially funded through venture capital from a number of investors, including Pearson PLC, Dell, AOL, The Carlyle Group and Novak Biddle Venture Partners. [12] [13]
Overseas expansion began in the early 2000s, growing to include Asia, Australia and Europe in its service area. [14] In particular, through a partnership with a Chinese education company, Blackboard also began providing software services to many universities in China. [15]
Blackboard went public in June 2004 under the stock market ticker BBBB. [16] Sale of shares in the initial public offering raised an estimated $70 million for the company, [11] making it the second-most successful technology IPO of that year. [17]
In 2006, Blackboard completed the acquisition of its largest competitor, WebCT Inc, enlarging its share of the higher education market to between 65 and 75 percent. [9] [18] [19]
Over the next five years, the company invested in a series of new products and acquisitions, expanding beyond the learning management system market. [20] New products released during this time include Blackboard Xythos, [21] Blackboard Connect, Blackboard Mobile, Blackboard Collaborate, and Blackboard Analytics. [22] [20]
By 2011, Blackboard was used by over half of colleges and universities in the US. [23] On July 1, 2011, Blackboard agreed to a $1.64 billion buyout by an investor group led by Providence Equity Partners, which was completed on October 4. [24] [25] Following the sale, Providence Equity Partners merged Edline, its K-12 learning system, with Blackboard. Edline was later renamed Blackboard Engage. [26] [27]
Jay Bhatt succeeded Chasen as CEO of the company in October 2012. [28] Bhatt came to the company after serving as the CEO of Progress Software. [29] As CEO of Blackboard, Bhatt combined the company's product portfolio into offerings called solutions. [1] [30] He also restructured the company by market (including North America and International) rather than by product, and consolidated product development and management under new executives. [31] It was reported in July 2014 that approximately 500 of Blackboard's 3,000 employees were hired between 2013 and 2014. [30]
The company's key focuses under Bhatt's leadership have been: student-driven learning solutions; investing in Blackboard Learn, the company's core product; [32] integrating the company’s portfolio of products; and building education service offerings, such as online program management. [22] [33] [34] In 2013, the company introduced a platform to host massive open online courses called MOOCs, and it introduced student profiles and databases in 2014. [22] [32] [29] Bhatt also changed the company's strategy for acquiring new businesses. Rather than purchasing competitors, Bhatt has stated he prefers to acquire companies based on their innovations. [32]
In July 2014, Bhatt announced multiple product changes, including a redesign of Blackboard's UX to an interface resembling iOS, expanding the deployment options of Blackboard Learn to include self-hosted, managed hosting and public cloud, and improvements to Blackboard's mobile app. [1] [30]
As of July 2014, Blackboard serves approximately 17,000 schools and organizations. [30] It holds the highest share of the education market with 75 percent of colleges and universities and more than half of K-12 districts in the US using its products and services. [35]
As of September 2014, Blackboard had acquired MyEdu, [29] Perceptis, [30] and CardSmith, [36] and Requestec [37] under Bhatt's leadership. The acquisitions reflected Bhatt's new acquisition strategy of making investments that serve students and will lead to innovations in Blackboard's core teaching and learning products. [36] [1]References
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help page).My second request is for a new section to follow the History section. Blackboard has a reputation for acquiring companies—and rightfully so, it has gained four companies in the last year alone. Including the details of each one of the acquisitions in the History section makes that section very long, however, and perhaps takes away from its readability. I think information about Blackboard's acquisitions is important to keep in the article as it is a major part of the company's strategy, so I'd like to propose having a separate section about mergers and acquisitions which will allow readers to find information they're interested in more easily. I've written a draft for this section below:
Blackboard has used the acquisition of other companies as a strategy to both limit competitors and enter new markets. [1] [2] [3] Between 2006 and 2012, the company spent more than $500 million on acquisitions. [2]
In 2001, Blackboard acquired AT&T Campuswide and CEI Special Teams, developers of ID cards that can be used for campus commerce and security. [4] The following year, the company purchased George Washington University's course management software, Prometheus. [5] Blackboard acquired SA Cash, a student ID rewards program developed by Student Advantage, in 2003. [6]
In October 2005, the company announced that it was acquiring WebCT Inc., its largest rival in the education software industry. [7] Through the acquisition, Blackboard gained over 1,400 institutional customers as well as 274 employees. [7] In the two years leading to the merger, Blackboard's most significant growth was in the elementary and secondary education client sector. [7] According to market research company Eduventures, the merger with WebCT increased the firm's share of the higher-education market to between 65 and 75 percent. [8]
Following the purchase of WebCT, Blackboard purchased content management company, Xythos Software, Inc in November 2007. [9] The company expanded into the area of emergency phone and email notifications with the acquisition of NTI Group in 2008, which became the basis for Blackboard Connect. [10] [11] In 2009, the acquisition of ANGEL Learning, an education software developer, increased Blackboard's client base to nearly 6,000 educational institutions, companies and government agencies. [12] In July of the same year, the company purchased the Stanford University student-run TerribyClever Design, LLC, whose iPhone application provided the basis for the Blackboard Mobile division to develop the service for other university campuses. [13] Blackboard then acquired Saf-T-Net, provider of mobile alerts for K-12, in March 2010. [14]
In July 2010, the company purchased both Wimba, Inc. and Elluminate, Inc., providers of online and mobile collaboration tools, to form Blackboard Collaborate. The purchase of iStrategy, a data analysis firm, in December of 2010 led to the creation of Blackboard Analytics. [15] Blackboard Student Services was developed from Presidium Inc., a provider of administrative and academic support services, which Blackboard acquired in January 2011. [16]
The company merged with Edline, a provider of online communications software for K-12 schools, after Edline's owner, Providence Equity Partners, acquired Blackboard in October 2011. [17] Edline was renamed Blackboard Engage in June 2012. [18] [19]
In March 2012 Blackboard acquired two companies based on Moodle's open-source software: Baltimore-based Moodlerooms Inc. and NetSpot of Adelaide, Australia. The two companies became the basis of Blackboard's Open Source Services division. [20] [21]
In January 2014, Blackboard made its first acquisition under the leadership of Jay Bhatt with the purchase of MyEdu, an Austin-based online education company, which provides education and career planning tools for college students. The acquisition was seen as Blackboard stepping toward a new focus on student-based software according to The Washington Post. [22] The acquisition was followed by the purchase of Perceptis, a provider of help desk and administrative services, in July 2014. [23] [24] In August 2014, Blackboard acquired CardSmith, a company that offers cards for student credentials and on-campus payments. Through the acquisition, Blackboard acquired 200 customers as well as cloud-based services for its Blackboard Transact product. [25] In September 2014, The company acquired Requestec, a provider of Web-based Real Time Communication (WebRTC) technology that allows IP telephony, video conferencing and instant messaging directly within desktop and mobile browsers. [26]References
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help page).Just a quick note about both drafts: because I've used material that's already in the article, in several places the citation is the short version, rather than the full one as the full cite is given elsewhere in the article. This means there's some gaps in the reflists in this request. Hopefully this won't be a problem since the material in question is already in the article, so does not need to have its sources spot-checked.
I realize this is quite a bit of new material, so I invite editors to take their time reviewing it and let me know if there are any questions. If there are no questions, I would appreciate if another editor could make the edits if they agree with them. Thanks. 16912 Rhiannon ( Talk · COI) 20:40, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
This article looks like it was written by BlackBoard's marcom department. The Dissident Aggressor 16:58, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
Uh, no. The source that called them "infamous" was Rhiannon's! It was one of the two that she switched talking about the zillions of customers (see below). That's how I discovered that they were a disliked company. I had no idea. Now, I wonder why you're assailing the source that I used (that s/he provided) when the article is filled with press releases as sources. Why don't you pitch in and clean this PR piece up ? Now why you're assuming bad faith on my part, in the face of obvious corprorate editing is a good question. The Dissident Aggressor 04:32, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
In the context of my statements above, the first reference I checked came up with failed verification and has been tagged as such.
I think this article needs to be gone over very carefully. I'm afraid that this smacks of corporate manipulation. The Dissident Aggressor 14:41, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered. |
Hi to anyone watching this page, also pinging DissidentAggressor, Ɱ, DGG, ChrisGualtieri and Jonpatterns who have either reviewed my suggestions here before, or with whom I had discussed this article late last year. I'd like to follow up on DissidentAggressor's previously noted concerns about the use of press releases in this article, also the length of the material discussing Acquisitions and the details included in the Criticism section, to see if we can work towards some improvements we can all agree upon.
Starting with (hopefully) the simplest of the above, the use of press releases, I'd like to propose some independent sources that can be used to replace the four press releases currently used in the article:
While I was reviewing the citations, I also noticed that there's currently a Blogspot blog used in the Other products section to support a detail about Blackboard Collaborate being used by the Open University. I don't think this information is crucial, so it (and the citation) could be removed.
Due to my conflict of interest with this article, since I have been working as a consultant to Blackboard Inc., it would be best for others to review the above and make the changes if they are appropriate. I hope that editors will be able to help with this. Thanks in advance, 16912 Rhiannon ( Talk · COI) 21:05, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered. |
Hi again! As I mentioned above, I'd like to help resolve the tag on the Mergers and acquisitions section of the article. The current section is, admittedly, quite lengthy. I think this speaks to Blackboard's history of growth being driven heavily by acquiring competitors and related companies—something that is frequently mentioned in the company's media coverage. Considering that the company is well known for its aggressive acquisition strategy, I do feel that the section should be retained. However, I can understand that it may come across as being a lot of detail that many readers may be less interested in.
Below, I've put together a more condensed draft for the section. What I've tried to do here is to give more context to the mentions of the acquisitions, while paring down the detail about individual acquisitions. That way, the impact of the acquisitions for the company's development and offerings is more clear: ie. readers are getting a better understanding of how these acquisitions have led to the Blackboard that exists today. I've also weeded out some of the smaller acquisitions that are perhaps less interesting to readers or impactful on the company's development. Can folks take a look over this and see if it would be a reasonable replacement for the existing section? I'm hoping that this draft will resolve the tag, or at least be a starting point towards it.
Blackboard has used the acquisition of other companies as a strategy to both limit competitors and enter new markets. [1] [2] [3] Between 2006 and 2012, the company spent more than $500 million on acquisitions. [3]
Competing learning management platforms that were acquired by Blackboard in order to absorb their users and reduce competition include: [4] George Washington University's course management software, Prometheus, in 2002; [5] and WebCT Inc., its largest rival in the education software industry, in 2005. [6] According to market research company Eduventures, the merger with WebCT increased the firm's share of the higher-education market to between 65 and 75 percent. [7] In 2009, the acquisition of ANGEL Learning, an education software developer, increased Blackboard's client base to nearly 6,000 educational institutions, companies and government agencies. [8]
The company has also made acquisitions in order to expand its product base with other education-related services and software. [4] Such acquisitions include: NTI Group in 2008, which became the basis for Blackboard Connect; [4] [9] providers of online and mobile collaboration tools, Wimba, Inc. and Elluminate, Inc. in 2010, to form Blackboard Collaborate; iStrategy in December 2010, which led to the creation of Blackboard Analytics; [10] Presidium Inc. in 2011, which developed into Blackboard Student Services. [11] Following the company's merger with Edline in 2011, [12] Edline was later renamed Blackboard Engage. [13] In March 2012, Blackboard acquired Moodlerooms Inc. and NetSpot of Adelaide, Australia, which then became the basis of Blackboard's Open Source Services division. [14] [15]
From January 2014 to April 2015, Blackboard acquired nine companies, [16] [17] including: MyEdu, an Austin-based online education company; [18] Perceptis, a provider of help desk and administrative services; [19] [20] CardSmith, a company that offered cards for student ID and on-campus payments; [21] Requestec, a provider of technology for VoIP, video conferencing and instant messaging; [22] and Schoolwires, a company that specialized in building school websites. [23]
References
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Blackboard has used the acquisition of other companies as a strategy to both limit competitors and enter new markets.<ref name=Empson12>{{cite news |title=Blackboard: With Both Co-founders Now Gone, It’s The End Of An Era For The Education Software Giant |author=Rip Empson |url= http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/18/with-both-co-founders-now-gone-its-the-end-of-an-era-for-education-software-giant-blackboard/ |work=[[TechCrunch]] |date=October 18, 2012 |accessdate=May 30, 2013}}</ref><ref name=Heussner13>{{cite news |title=A new Blackboard? 4 ways the ed tech giant’s new CEO hopes to win back market share |author=Ki Mae Heussner |url=https://gigaom.com/2013/07/12/a-new-blackboard-4-ways-the-ed-tech-giants-new-ceo-hopes-to-win-back-market-share/ |work=[[GigaOM]] |date=July 12, 2013 |accessdate=May 28, 2014}}</ref><ref name=Green12>{{cite news |title=The Long (and Open?) View on Blackboard |author=Kenneth C. Green |url=http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/digital-tweed/long-and-open-view-blackboard#sthash.b9UjZqN5.dpbs |work=[[Inside Higher Ed]] |date=April 2, 2012 |accessdate=May 28, 2014}}</ref> Between 2006 and 2012, the company spent more than $500 million on acquisitions.<ref name=Green12/>
Competing learning management platforms that were acquired by Blackboard in order to absorb their users and reduce competition include:<ref name=FlookJuly13>{{cite news |title=Rebuilding Blackboard: How Jay Bhatt plans to resurrect one of D.C.’s original tech startups |author=Bill Flook |url=http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/print-edition/2013/07/26/rebuilding-blackboard-how-jay-bhatt.html?page=all |work=[[American City Business Journals|Washington Business Journal]] |date=July 16, 2013 |accessdate=May 29, 2014}}</ref> [[George Washington University|George Washington University's]] course management software, Prometheus, in 2002;<ref name=Licamele02>{{cite news |title=GW’s Prometheus Merges with Software Developer Blackboard Inc. |author=Greg Licamele |url=http://www.gwu.edu/~bygeorge/march7ByG!/prometheus.html |work=By George! |date=March 5, 2002 |accessdate=May 28, 2014}}</ref> and [[WebCT]] Inc., its largest rival in the education software industry, in 2005.<ref name=EW05>{{cite news |title=Makers of Online Systems Merge; Blackboard buys up rival in course-handling market |magazine=Education Week |date=October 26, 2005 |volume=25 |issue=9 |page=8}}</ref> According to market research company Eduventures, the merger with WebCT increased the firm's share of the higher-education market to between 65 and 75 percent.<ref name=Carnevale>{{cite news |title=Justice Department Sees No Antitrust Concerns in Blackboard's Plan to Take Over WebCT |first=Dan |last=Carnevale |newspaper=The Chronicle of Higher Education |isbn= |issn= |oclc= |pmid= |pmd= |bibcode= |id= |date=February 17, 2006 |page=37 |volume=52 |issue=24}}</ref> In 2009, the acquisition of [[ANGEL Learning]], an education software developer, increased Blackboard's client base to nearly 6,000 educational institutions, companies and government agencies.<ref name=Kennedy09>{{cite news |title=Blackboard Inc.Purchases Education Software Developer
|first=Kathleen |last=Kennedy |newspaper=Education Week |date=May 20, 2009 |page=4 |volume=28 |issue=32}}</ref>
The company has also made acquisitions in order to expand its product base with other education-related services and software.<ref name=FlookJuly13/> Such acquisitions include: NTI Group in 2008, which became the basis for Blackboard Connect;<ref name=FlookJuly13/><ref name=Mider08>{{cite news |title=Blackboard to Buy NTI, Alert Maker, for $182 Million (Update1) |author=Zachary R. Mider |url=http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?sid=a0IWy6J.gKmY&pid=newsarchive |work=[[Bloomberg L.P.|Bloomberg]] |date=January 14, 2008 |accessdate=May 29, 2014}}</ref> providers of online and mobile collaboration tools, Wimba, Inc. and Elluminate, Inc. in 2010, to form Blackboard Collaborate; iStrategy in December 2010, which led to the creation of Blackboard Analytics;<ref name=Kolowich>{{cite news |title=Blackboard's Next Phase |first=Steve |last=Kolowich |url=http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/02/22/blackboard_evolves_its_business_strategy_in_light_of_market_saturation_in_higher_ed |newspaper=Inside Higher Ed |date=February 22, 2011 |accessdate=April 10, 2011}}</ref> Presidium Inc. in 2011, which developed into Blackboard Student Services.<ref name=Pres>{{cite news |title=In Bid to Expand Into Student Services, Blackboard Buys Presidium |first=Jeff |last=Young |url=http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/in-bid-to-expand-into-student-services-blackboard-buys-presidium/28965 |newspaper=The Chronicle of Higher Education |date=January 12, 2011 |accessdate=August 30, 2011}}</ref> Following the company's merger with [[Edline]] in 2011,<ref name=Clabaugh11>{{cite news |title=Blackboard private, merges with Edline |author=Jeff Clabaugh |url=http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2011/10/05/blackboard-private-merges-with-edline.html |work=[[American City Business Journals|Washington Business Journal]] |date=October 5, 2011|accessdate=May 17, 2013}}</ref> Edline was later renamed Blackboard Engage.<ref name=Giovacco11>{{cite news |title=Providence Increases Blackboard Buyout Loan as Outflows Subside |author=Krista Giovacco |url=http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-09-09/providence-increases-blackboard-buyout-loan-as-outflows-subside.html |work=[[Businessweek]] |date=September 9, 2011 |accessdate=May 17, 2013}}</ref> In March 2012, Blackboard acquired Moodlerooms Inc. and NetSpot of [[Adelaide]], Australia, which then became the basis of Blackboard's Open Source Services division.<ref name=Clabaugh>{{cite news |title=Blackboard makes Moodle acquisitions |author=Jeff Clabaugh |url=http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2012/03/26/blackboard-makes-moodle-acquisitions.html |work=[[American City Business Journals|Washington Business Journal]] |date=March 26, 2012 |accessdate=September 5, 2014}}</ref><ref name=Kolowich12>{{cite news |title=Blackboard's Open-Source Pivot |author=Steve Kolowich |url=http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/03/27/blackboard-buys-moodlerooms-creates-open-source-division#sthash.eds4ewfp.dpbs |work=[[Inside Higher Ed]]|date=March 27, 2012 |accessdate=May 28, 2014}}</ref>
I've mentioned previously, but just to be crystal clear: I'm here as a consultant to Blackboard and due to that COI I will not make any edits to the article. Instead, I hope to discuss the draft here and I'm very much open to feedback and / or additional suggestions for improving this section. Please let me know if you have any questions or thoughts on how best to address the Mergers and acquisitions information. Thanks, 16912 Rhiannon ( Talk · COI) 19:37, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered. |
Hi again, all. In my previous post above, I'd noted that I'd like to discuss the Criticism section of the article, and I'm now returning to that topic. Generally, I'm of the opinion that criticism or controversy sections should be avoided, per WP:CRITS, and wonder if editors would be in favor of integrating the information from the Criticism into sections of the article where it might best fit.
If so, here is my suggestion for placing the material within other sections:
On the other hand, I understand if other editors feel that a dedicated section is the best place to collate criticism of the company and its products. If it is preferable to retain the Criticism section, then I'd like to suggest a small addition and a few adjustments to the existing text:
The below shows the section with my suggestions in green:
According to a TechCrunch article from 2012, despite its success, Blackboard had become "one of the most disliked — even detested — companies in education." [1] In December 2011, Fast Company reported that 93% of respondents to the Amplicate customer opinion survey "hate" the company. [2]
The company's products' user interfaces became "infamous as a part of academic life that was to be endured, not enjoyed" according to TechCrunch writer Rip Empson in 2014. [3] According to EdSurge, as of 2015, the company was in the process of updating its learning management system and the user interface within it, noting that navigation of the latter had been a cause of "dismay" for long-time users. [4] [5]References
Empson14
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).According to a ''TechCrunch'' article from 2012, despite its success, Blackboard had become "one of the most disliked — even detested — companies in education."<ref name=Empson-18-Oct-2012>{{cite news|last1=Empson|first1=Rip|title=Blackboard: With Both Co-founders Now Gone, It’s The End Of An Era For The Education Software Giant|url=http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/18/with-both-co-founders-now-gone-its-the-end-of-an-era-for-education-software-giant-blackboard/|accessdate=13 December 2014|publisher=[[Techcrunch]]|date=18 October 2012}}</ref> In December 2011, ''[[Fast Company (magazine)|Fast Company]]'' reported that 93% of respondents to the Amplicate customer opinion survey "hate" the company.<ref name=kamenetz-13-dec-14>{{cite news|last1=Kamenetz|first1=Anya|title=The Ingenious Business Model Behind Coursekit, A Tumblr For Higher Education|url=http://www.fastcompany.com/1799173/ingenious-business-model-behind-coursekit-tumblr-higher-education|accessdate=13 December 2014|work=[[Fast Company (magazine)|Fast Company]]}}</ref>
Once again, I won't make any of these edits myself due to my COI, so I encourage others to review, offer their thoughts and make such edits as are most appropriate. Thanks, 16912 Rhiannon ( Talk · COI) 22:07, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
Appreciate all the input here and thanks NQ for your edits. I hope that if there are any disagreements about these changes, editors can discuss it here. 16912 Rhiannon ( Talk · COI) 16:33, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
It looks like the market share statistics are from the techcrunch article that's a few years old now, and which was likely from a company press release. While BB likely peaked at around 75% marketshare, the best market data I can find seems to indicate that their higher ed market share has steadily declined and is now closer to 34% (rather than 75%). This source is only counting institutions with over 500 FTE - http://edutechnica.com/2016/10/03/4th-annual-lms-data-update/
Not sure on K12 data, but I imagine that it's now similarly out of date. You can see the longer term higher ed trend here http://mfeldstein.com/state-higher-ed-lms-market-spring-2016/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.162.246.204 ( talk) 23:28, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
In the UK, Moodle is by far the dominant player in the VLE environment, and I suspect this might be true in the US too. There has been a steady trend in the last 15 years of universities who had been on WebCT moving to Moodle and next to no move in the other direction. This is anecdotal / first hand, but at an annual MoodleMoot in the UK I chatted about this during the lunch break to a Blackboard representative on one of the vendor stands that were provided display space. He confirmed that the Blackboard customer base had, indeed, declined steadily for a number of years and that a lot of their revenue now comes from providing support to Moodle sites.
The information in the article is clearly well out of date. Perhaps there are other, more up-to-date sources that could provide a picture of current market share. Moodle appears to have been dominant, globally, for a number of years. See, for example, https://mfeldstein.wpengine.com/academic-lms-market-share-view-across-four-global-regions/
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Advertising. This whole page reads like it was copied from the company's "About:" page. User:Zoe| (talk) 22:42, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
Questionable Edit. I had put the following paragraph at the close of the article to counter the advert tone of the article, only to have it removed by a new user with no explanation. I would rather get a discussion of why this was removed than do an automatic revert - what do people think? And, with the paragraph below, could we remove the advert tag? User:Dialectric June 20, 2006 quote: - Moodle and the Sakai Project are open source alternatives to the Blackboard Academic Suite. These projects grew out of a need for a low cost, high flexibility course and content management software, and are supported by universities and system administrators who see the high cost of purchasing and administrating Blackboard products, and the closed source nature of those products, as significant drawbacks.
Desire2Learn lawsuit. Cleaned up this text. Added and fixed details. Added info on the Moodle organization's efforts to publicize the lawsuit. Reorganized the page - seems to look cleaner now. Cheers. -- dilettante 23:00, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
-- 141.156.144.132 23:58, 17 August 2006 (UTC): Bb/Scholar360 Comparison. Removed the Bb-Scholar360 comparison link in External Links section. This comparison was marketing material created and hosted by Scholar360, not by a neutral third party.
The article currently states "Blackboard Collaborate launched in July 2010.". More research needed, but I think it's more accurate to say "Blackboard announced an acquisition of Elluminate in July of 2010. Their flagship product, Elluminate Live!, then became the foundation for Blackboard Collaborate". (e.g. http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2010/07/05/daily39.html) dwarring 29 August 2012
Was it a lawsuit or just a complaint? -- Gbleem 03:43, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Here is my layman analysis of the Blackboard patent. Patent here: [ [1]] The key to this patent is two-fold: first, a MEANS to ASSIGN a level of ACCESS to EACH data file based on the user's role (i.e., student or teacher); second, this means to determine whether access is warranted, and to control the data file. To break this patent, that is, to work around it (avoid infringement), you simply have to design a system that does not ASSIGN to EACH data file a level of ACCESS, nor determine whether access is warranted. How to do this? Easy. You simply allow each student and teacher to access a shared DIRECTORY (folder) rather than a file. Another workaround, since the patent covers server-client networks, is to have a "peer-to-peer" network, like gnutella or edonkey. Finally, you can simply fight the patent in court (which one company is doing). Now this workaround only avoids direct infringment--the patent holder can argue of indirect infringement as well. Also, it may not be technically possible to implement this workaround. For this reason, it might make more sense to try and invalidate the patent in court. Language from the patent here: "means for assigning a level of access to and control of each data file based on a user of the system's predetermined role in a course; means for determining whether access to a data file associated with the course is authorized; means for allowing access to and control of the data file associated with the course if authorization is granted based on the access level of the user of the system.
The link alleging close ties between Federated and the Republican party appears to go to a strongly partisan web site. To maintain NPOV, it would be better to justify the claim that "some of the Donahues are among the biggest individual donors to the Republican National Committee and to the Bush family" with a link to a better source, such as the Federal Election Commission.
Update: I went back and added POV-check-section to this section. It seems like there are a lot of unsourced/questionably-sourced, and perhaps non-NPOV compliant statments in there.
-- 141.156.144.132 12:34, 17 August 2006 (UTC): Oh man, this "Blackboard's ownership" section is conspiracy theory at its best. It's drawn word for word from this blog post.
The blog is written by George Roberts aka Wikipedia user, User:Peaceful, who added the "Blackboard's ownership" section to the Wikipedia entry.
When you google around, it's pretty clear that Roberts is spinning an undocumented conspiracy theory. Examples:
His comments on this blog post: "Blackboard’s major shareholders include Federated Investors, the Carlyle Group and Oak Hill Capital Partners. These firms are very close to the Whitehouse and are among the biggest corporate and individual donors to the Republican Party and the Bush family. Although I usually Favour cock-up to conspiracy, the Bb patent skirmish is, maybe, an important little battle in the hearts-and-minds war."
This post from his blog: "With Federated, Carlyle and Oak Hill all in the Bb shareholders club along with Bill Gates, Microsoft and Pearson, Blackboard might be seen as a bit of a darling. So, the question becomes why on two fronts: why Bb, and why the patent and litigation route? Is it that Bb's behavior (or the behavior of the company's principals) makes it attractive to big-time buccaneering neocons, or is the company being gently encouraged in this direction by its owners? And/or is there another angle to be explored? One to do with shaping the tools and, because of the nature of the VLE/LMS toolkit, shaping the institutions that shape the minds that make the world what it is?"
Another one from Roberts: "Blackboard provides a means towards control of the curriculum should someone want to. The patent application was, possibly, late dot-com chutzpah. Its subsequent deployment strikes me as strategic and in line with neoconservative affinities. In fact, the patent pending status must have been one of the reasons Microsoft and the venture capitalists backed Bb in the first place. Should the patent not have been granted they could have quietly sold up."
None of these assertions are documented. This is not the kind of stuff that belongs in Wikipedia.
" This is not the kind of stuff that belongs in Wikipedia."
I have to agree. To be credible, the author would need to demonstrate that a) Blackboard has significantly more institutional investors than similar publicly held coporations (possible, but unlikely) and b) that those institutional investors were significantly more "Republican" than the norm for such groups (seems implausible; investment bankers, venture capitalists, and the like tend to be rather Republican as a general rule).
Otherwise, it does look like partisan conspiracy mongering. I don't see Microsoft investing in Blackboard as particularly noteworthy; they have their fingers in a lot of pies (e.g., Microsoft has also donated money to Moodle, a GPL course management system). Unless this section can be justified with links to credible sources, it should be deleted.
It's sad that there is a certain demographic that seems compelled to climb on their favorite political hobbyhorse, regardless of the nominal subject under discussion. Not everything involves a Bush conspiracy, just as not everything involved a Clinton conspiracy back in his day. I find partisan screeching of any stripe less than useful. Keep it on your blog, not in Wikipedia.
BTW, I'm not a Republican (or a Democrat), and I think Blackboard's recent actions are morally repugnant and will, in the long term, prove to be a financial disaster for the company. What were they thinking?
I see someone cleaned this up and got rid of most of the over-the-top stuff, but I still question whether it's noteworthy at all. Firms like Morgan Stanley invest in thousands of different publicly held corporations (they hold positions in 4,566 different companies as I type; their $44 million investment in Blackboard doesn't show up until you get to the 34th screen of the list, so it's very small by their standards).
Also, any list of this nature is practically guaranteed to be outdated almost before it's entered. Unless someone can provide a clear reason why institutional holdings in Blackboard are of particular interest, this entire section should be deleted.
The investments by Microsoft and Pearson Publishing are significant. Blackboard has a well-documented history of collaboration with Microsoft, which to a large extent makes them representative of Microsoft's presence in e-learning. Additionally, Blackboard has documented agreements with publishers and is a means of marketing commercial product to clients.
I work in the field of educational technology at a univeristy. Not to support conspiracy theories, but there the discussion about 'who owns the content' isn't just about culling learning materials for free. There is a legitimate fear from professors of being blacklisted for having liberal views. Perhaps that is connected to what you are discussing. This blog tells the story and it would be easy to dig up legitimate news sources. I remember reading about these instances as they happened. http://www.theinquirer.net/images/articles/blackboard.pdf
IF Bb is involved in such a scheme, that will be the end of their business. Campus are running from Bb due to high prices and this patent crap. I was a local hero for migrating my univeristy off Bb. Computerhag 14:45, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
138.88.67.103 20:30, 2 September 2006 (UTC) Removed the Blackboard Ownership section. It was flagged weeks ago and no one has stood up and said that it should stay. The closest was the guy who said the investments by Microsoft and Pearson are significant.
The intent of the person who originally posted this section was conspiracy-mongering, i.e. trying to imply that the Blackboard patent controversy represents some kind of attempt by Republican/conservative to "shape the minds" of children by . . . what? By investing in a company and then somehow forcing the company to be successful and then strongarming the company into filing a patent that takes six years to be granted so that they can then . . . what? Blackboard *still* doesn't determine the content of the university courses that are delivered on its software. Does this George Roberts guy think that Bb has subliminal messages embedded in their logo or something?!? It's really just preposterous.
I looked at a dozen or so other Wikipedia articles on public companies and didn't see any that listed out the company's major investors. There doesn't seem to be any merit or purpose to having this section in the article.
I think this article should be here -- 69.250.70.141 03:15, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Does anyone have any objection to removing the neutrality flag? The article seems neutral to me - dialectric
Questionable Edit. I had put the following paragraph at the close of the article to counter the advert tone of the article, only to have it removed by a new user with no explanation. I would rather get a discussion of why this was removed than do an automatic revert - what do people think? And, with the paragraph below, could we remove the advert tag? User:Dialectric June 20, 2006
Forum Shopping. I'm really surprised this article doesn't mention forum shopping, or am I the only one who initially thought that Lufkin, Texas was an odd venue for Blackboard to pursue its patent lawsuit? It took a couple of minutes before I remembered something about east Texas being a very, uh, "popular" place for pursuing these kinds of suits. Unless someone can suggest a different and credible reason why Lufkin would be chosen, I think this article deserves a mention of the topic. Anon July 3, 2007.
Why is this article so absorbed in the litigation stuff? It seems really unbalanced, given how little actual information about Blackboard's products is provided. Back to Google, I guess.
Product information does not belong in Wiki unless it is truely notable. Legal stuff appears to be the main reason why the company is significant -- as its impact on clients, other companies, and the US patent system for software patents is noteworthy. Bw022 ( talk) 20:34, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Blackboard is not SCO. The fact that the two have similiar noteable legal issues does not mean that they have similiarly noteable products. SCO had considerably more than 2200 installations. I fail to see how they are noteable. Bw022 ( talk) 00:13, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
Coursesites is a service being advertised by Bb . . . does anyone know any more about it? How does Bb make $$ from it? What about the intellectual property issues so very much ballyhooed throughout the discussion pages? Really. Could someone please put some info up on WPedia about it?
Coursesites is their free demo of the learning management system "Learn". According to the terms of use, the usage is free limited access for non-profit users. Profit usage is only allowed for customers having licened a Blackboard product for the purpose to trial and develop. Coursesite preview capability is important for the majority of users running the old interface now called "Original Experience". Coursites allows to testdrive Learn with the new "Ultra experience" user interface . -- Telcoach ( talk) 10:12, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
No question, this article requires a lot of work before it conforms to Wikipedia's guidelines, and I plan to do just that. I rolled back a spot of vandalism to the article recently and have just added it to a handful of relevant WikiProjects, but before I go any further I should disclose that I have a financial relationship with Blackboard Inc. Ever mindful of abiding by Wikpedia's conflict of interest provisos, I'll make sure all direct edits to the live article are non-controversial, and I'll first seek consensus in proposing more substantive changes. If you see this note and are interested in helping to improve the page, please join in. Cheers, WWB Too ( talk) 18:52, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
It's been a while since I posted here to say that I'd be working on improving this article, but in that time I've put together a completely new draft as an intended replacement for the current article. My draft addresses all of the problems with the current version, particularly with regard to missing or outdated information, weak structure of sections and over-reliance on lists.
In the proposed draft, I have:
As much as possible I have used third-party sources to provide reliable sources for information in the article, however in places I've also used Blackboard's website to verify straightforward details, such as dates of acquisitions.
For anyone who may have this page watchlisted, please take a look at this draft and let me know if you have any feedback, or if you think this would be OK to move into place as is. If you think the draft mostly represents an improvement but have some small edits to suggest, I would recommend that the draft be moved into place and then any edits can be made or discussed. If there is no response here, I'll seek feedback on relevant WikiProjects, but if after a week or so there are no serious disagreements, then I'll probably move it.
Note also that in my userspace draft, I have commented out the company's non-free logo and disabled categories as well. These will need to be restored if and when this new draft goes live. Cheers, WWB Too ( talk) 15:16, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
The whole section has no sources! the last sentence is certainly not encyclopaedia worthy: "Blackboard's near-monopoly in the internet education suite has seemed to slow their innovation in the products, and it shows."...i'm a noob, but should that part at least be removed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.26.85.6 ( talk) 13:35, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
I hate to remove material critical of a product, but I cannot find sources for anything in this section. I will tag it, and see what other editors do. Wikfr ( talk) 03:37, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered. |
A year and a half ago, I worked on a new draft for this article to address problems with the article at the time (you can see the details of this above). Since then, some aspects of the article have become outdated and an editor has expressed concerns that details in the article read as promotional, leading to the addition of the warning tag at the top of the article.
As I disclosed in 2011, I am again working on behalf of Blackboard Inc. and seeking to improve the article, particularly to bring it up-to-date and address the warning tag. I have moved the article into my userspace and made some edits to update the material, address the promotional material per notes from the editor ( User:DGG) who added the tag. As that editor is busy and has not been able to get back to this, I'd like to invite other editors to review the article draft in my userspace and see if it addresses the issue flagged by the tag on the article.
The user space draft is here: User:WWB_Too/Blackboard_Inc._(2013_revision)
To summarize the main changes that I've made:
If editors here feel that the version in my userspace is an improvement and addresses the tag on the article, can someone move this version live and remove the tag? (Please note I have disabled the categories and non-free logo in my draft; these will need to be re-enabled if moved over.) I'm open to any further suggestions for improvements or if there are any questions about the draft version I've worked on, please let me know. Cheers, WWB Too ( Talk · COI) 13:09, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
In the current, recently added Criticism section, only one of the sources is a reliable independent source: the TechCrunch article. One source is a website that collates information from social media sites ( Amplicate), and the other is blog post on a website focusing on offering tips for college students ( HackCollege). I've focused my revision just on the criticism from the TechCrunch article, which offers an opinion on the "feature creep" in Blackboard's learning management software. I've added this into the Blackboard Learn section, since the criticism is about the software. Although the source doesn't specifically mention Blackboard Learn, the criticism is clearly about the company's learning management software. With these changes, I think my full draft ( here) now addresses this material properly. Cheers, WWB Too ( Talk · COI) 22:09, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
Hi, a few weeks ago I helped to create an article for Blackboard's co-founder and former CEO Michael Chasen. I'm reaching out here to see if anyone would be able to add in a wikilink to this article, linking where Michael Chasen is mentioned in this article to the newly created article. Though I feel like this is an appropriate, neutral edit to make I'll refrain from doing so myself, since I have a COI: my work on the Michael Chasen article was on behalf of his new company, SocialRadar. As with all COI projects I work on, I like to avoid direct edits to live articles. (In the interest of full disclosure, I'd like to note that I work with WWB Too who offered a new version of this article for review recently.)
As Chasen's full name is only used in two locations in this article — once in the introduction and once in the Early history section — I would suggest adding a wikilink to both of these occurrences, though I'm open to other suggestions. Thanks in advance for reviewing this. I'll be keeping an eye on this talk page so please reply here if you have any questions or can help with this small edit. 16912 Rhiannon ( Talk · COI) 00:47, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered. |
Hi folks, I've been asked by Blackboard to request some updates to a few areas of this article, as there have been some changes at Blackboard recently. Because I have a financial COI, I will not be making any direct edits to the article. Instead, I'll propose the updates here on the Talk page so other editors can review them and then implement them if they look okay. I should also note that I am a colleague of editors 16912 Rhiannon and WWB Too, who have posted here previously.
References
References
I may be back with some additional update requests later, but I hope an editor can take a look at these in the meantime and, if they look okay, go ahead and implement these changes. Let me know if you have any questions! Cheers, ChrisPond ( Talk · COI) 14:51, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered. |
Hi to anyone watching this page! Blackboard has made several new acquisitions this year and has undergone significant changes to the company and its products since this article was last updated. To help bring it up-to-date, I've been working on behalf of Blackboard to prepare some edits to this article. Some editors may remember me from a previous message here about adding a wikilink to the Michael Chasen article. This time around, I'm requesting changes to the infobox and introduction, and the addition of a new subsection to the Products and services section. I'm also working on some larger suggestions for the History section that I will share later.
I've revised the introduction to include a few updates. Blackboard's CEO, Jay Bhatt is currently not mentioned at all. What do other editors think about adding the sentence: "The company's CEO is Jay Bhatt, who has led Blackboard since October 2012" following the first sentence? Additionally, the last sentence of the introduction is a bit outdated. I found some more recent stats from 2014 that can added. The slightly reworked introduction is below:
References
In July, Blackboard announced that it would be offering its products in scalable packages called "solutions." This is a big shift from its previous model of licensing individual products. I've drafted a short subsection covering the basics of this change to follow the other sections in Products and services. The draft, as well as the markup are below.
References
Along with the change to the Products and services section, the infobox "Products" field should also be updated to include these new solutions. The Higher Ed and K-12 solutions are as follows:
Learning Core
[1]
Learning Essentials
[1]
Learning Insight
[1]
Learning Insight & Student Retention
[1]
Common Core
[2]
Innovative Classroom
[2]
Open Learning
[2]
Parental Engagement
[2]
K-12 Central Mobile App
[2]
TipTxt for Anti-bullying
[2]
The infobox currently only mentions Jay Bhatt under Key people, but the article mentions several more staff members that could be included. I'd like to suggest the following people be added to this field: Bill Davis (Chief Financial Officer), Mark Strassman (Senior Vice President of Product Management), Gary Lang (Senior Vice President of Product Development), Katie Blot (Senior Vice President of Education Services), Tracey Stout (Senior Vice President of Marketing).
As I have a conflict of interest, I will not make any of these changes myself. Instead, I hope an editor here will review these requests and make the edits if they agree with them. Thanks for taking a look. 16912 Rhiannon ( Talk · COI) 20:21, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
Hi again. As promised, I've returned with a few more updates for this article. These are more significant edits than last time and include new drafts for two sections. The first is for the History section. It's been a few years since the majority of this section was written, so it's in need of some maintenance. For instance, it includes a Recent expansion subsection that covers details that are no longer recent. I retained much of the wording and information in the current draft, but re-evaluated how the information is grouped. The new draft divides company's history into three sections: Early history, Expansion and buyout, and New leadership. The New leadership section includes the most new information and focuses on Blackboard under Jay Bhatt. I also trimmed down the details about individual acquisitions throughout, which I'll explain the reasoning for further down (though you can probably guess from this Talk section heading!). The text and markup for the new History section is below:
Blackboard Llc. was founded in 1997 by Michael Chasen and Matthew Pittinsky and began as a consulting firm contracting to the non-profit IMS Global Learning Consortium. [3] Chasen and Pittinsky started Blackboard upon leaving KPMG Consulting where they both had worked as part of the company’s Higher Education practice. [4] In 1998, the company merged with CourseInfo LLC, a small software provider that originated at Cornell University and was founded by Daniel Cane and Stephen Gilfus. [4] [5] [6] The combined company became known as Blackboard Inc. The first line of e-learning products was branded Blackboard CourseInfo, [7] until the CourseInfo brand was dropped in 2000. [8] The product was initially given to teachers for free to try out and then was licensed to schools. [9] The new company made a profit in its first year, and its sales in 1998 approached US$1 million. [4] Other early products included Blackboard Classroom and Blackboard Campus. [10]
By the late 1990s and early 2000s, the company had become the leading learning management system [11] This expansion was initially funded through venture capital from a number of investors, including Pearson PLC, Dell, AOL, The Carlyle Group and Novak Biddle Venture Partners. [12] [13]
Overseas expansion began in the early 2000s, growing to include Asia, Australia and Europe in its service area. [14] In particular, through a partnership with a Chinese education company, Blackboard also began providing software services to many universities in China. [15]
Blackboard went public in June 2004 under the stock market ticker BBBB. [16] Sale of shares in the initial public offering raised an estimated $70 million for the company, [11] making it the second-most successful technology IPO of that year. [17]
In 2006, Blackboard completed the acquisition of its largest competitor, WebCT Inc, enlarging its share of the higher education market to between 65 and 75 percent. [9] [18] [19]
Over the next five years, the company invested in a series of new products and acquisitions, expanding beyond the learning management system market. [20] New products released during this time include Blackboard Xythos, [21] Blackboard Connect, Blackboard Mobile, Blackboard Collaborate, and Blackboard Analytics. [22] [20]
By 2011, Blackboard was used by over half of colleges and universities in the US. [23] On July 1, 2011, Blackboard agreed to a $1.64 billion buyout by an investor group led by Providence Equity Partners, which was completed on October 4. [24] [25] Following the sale, Providence Equity Partners merged Edline, its K-12 learning system, with Blackboard. Edline was later renamed Blackboard Engage. [26] [27]
Jay Bhatt succeeded Chasen as CEO of the company in October 2012. [28] Bhatt came to the company after serving as the CEO of Progress Software. [29] As CEO of Blackboard, Bhatt combined the company's product portfolio into offerings called solutions. [1] [30] He also restructured the company by market (including North America and International) rather than by product, and consolidated product development and management under new executives. [31] It was reported in July 2014 that approximately 500 of Blackboard's 3,000 employees were hired between 2013 and 2014. [30]
The company's key focuses under Bhatt's leadership have been: student-driven learning solutions; investing in Blackboard Learn, the company's core product; [32] integrating the company’s portfolio of products; and building education service offerings, such as online program management. [22] [33] [34] In 2013, the company introduced a platform to host massive open online courses called MOOCs, and it introduced student profiles and databases in 2014. [22] [32] [29] Bhatt also changed the company's strategy for acquiring new businesses. Rather than purchasing competitors, Bhatt has stated he prefers to acquire companies based on their innovations. [32]
In July 2014, Bhatt announced multiple product changes, including a redesign of Blackboard's UX to an interface resembling iOS, expanding the deployment options of Blackboard Learn to include self-hosted, managed hosting and public cloud, and improvements to Blackboard's mobile app. [1] [30]
As of July 2014, Blackboard serves approximately 17,000 schools and organizations. [30] It holds the highest share of the education market with 75 percent of colleges and universities and more than half of K-12 districts in the US using its products and services. [35]
As of September 2014, Blackboard had acquired MyEdu, [29] Perceptis, [30] and CardSmith, [36] and Requestec [37] under Bhatt's leadership. The acquisitions reflected Bhatt's new acquisition strategy of making investments that serve students and will lead to innovations in Blackboard's core teaching and learning products. [36] [1]References
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help page).My second request is for a new section to follow the History section. Blackboard has a reputation for acquiring companies—and rightfully so, it has gained four companies in the last year alone. Including the details of each one of the acquisitions in the History section makes that section very long, however, and perhaps takes away from its readability. I think information about Blackboard's acquisitions is important to keep in the article as it is a major part of the company's strategy, so I'd like to propose having a separate section about mergers and acquisitions which will allow readers to find information they're interested in more easily. I've written a draft for this section below:
Blackboard has used the acquisition of other companies as a strategy to both limit competitors and enter new markets. [1] [2] [3] Between 2006 and 2012, the company spent more than $500 million on acquisitions. [2]
In 2001, Blackboard acquired AT&T Campuswide and CEI Special Teams, developers of ID cards that can be used for campus commerce and security. [4] The following year, the company purchased George Washington University's course management software, Prometheus. [5] Blackboard acquired SA Cash, a student ID rewards program developed by Student Advantage, in 2003. [6]
In October 2005, the company announced that it was acquiring WebCT Inc., its largest rival in the education software industry. [7] Through the acquisition, Blackboard gained over 1,400 institutional customers as well as 274 employees. [7] In the two years leading to the merger, Blackboard's most significant growth was in the elementary and secondary education client sector. [7] According to market research company Eduventures, the merger with WebCT increased the firm's share of the higher-education market to between 65 and 75 percent. [8]
Following the purchase of WebCT, Blackboard purchased content management company, Xythos Software, Inc in November 2007. [9] The company expanded into the area of emergency phone and email notifications with the acquisition of NTI Group in 2008, which became the basis for Blackboard Connect. [10] [11] In 2009, the acquisition of ANGEL Learning, an education software developer, increased Blackboard's client base to nearly 6,000 educational institutions, companies and government agencies. [12] In July of the same year, the company purchased the Stanford University student-run TerribyClever Design, LLC, whose iPhone application provided the basis for the Blackboard Mobile division to develop the service for other university campuses. [13] Blackboard then acquired Saf-T-Net, provider of mobile alerts for K-12, in March 2010. [14]
In July 2010, the company purchased both Wimba, Inc. and Elluminate, Inc., providers of online and mobile collaboration tools, to form Blackboard Collaborate. The purchase of iStrategy, a data analysis firm, in December of 2010 led to the creation of Blackboard Analytics. [15] Blackboard Student Services was developed from Presidium Inc., a provider of administrative and academic support services, which Blackboard acquired in January 2011. [16]
The company merged with Edline, a provider of online communications software for K-12 schools, after Edline's owner, Providence Equity Partners, acquired Blackboard in October 2011. [17] Edline was renamed Blackboard Engage in June 2012. [18] [19]
In March 2012 Blackboard acquired two companies based on Moodle's open-source software: Baltimore-based Moodlerooms Inc. and NetSpot of Adelaide, Australia. The two companies became the basis of Blackboard's Open Source Services division. [20] [21]
In January 2014, Blackboard made its first acquisition under the leadership of Jay Bhatt with the purchase of MyEdu, an Austin-based online education company, which provides education and career planning tools for college students. The acquisition was seen as Blackboard stepping toward a new focus on student-based software according to The Washington Post. [22] The acquisition was followed by the purchase of Perceptis, a provider of help desk and administrative services, in July 2014. [23] [24] In August 2014, Blackboard acquired CardSmith, a company that offers cards for student credentials and on-campus payments. Through the acquisition, Blackboard acquired 200 customers as well as cloud-based services for its Blackboard Transact product. [25] In September 2014, The company acquired Requestec, a provider of Web-based Real Time Communication (WebRTC) technology that allows IP telephony, video conferencing and instant messaging directly within desktop and mobile browsers. [26]References
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help page).Just a quick note about both drafts: because I've used material that's already in the article, in several places the citation is the short version, rather than the full one as the full cite is given elsewhere in the article. This means there's some gaps in the reflists in this request. Hopefully this won't be a problem since the material in question is already in the article, so does not need to have its sources spot-checked.
I realize this is quite a bit of new material, so I invite editors to take their time reviewing it and let me know if there are any questions. If there are no questions, I would appreciate if another editor could make the edits if they agree with them. Thanks. 16912 Rhiannon ( Talk · COI) 20:40, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
This article looks like it was written by BlackBoard's marcom department. The Dissident Aggressor 16:58, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
Uh, no. The source that called them "infamous" was Rhiannon's! It was one of the two that she switched talking about the zillions of customers (see below). That's how I discovered that they were a disliked company. I had no idea. Now, I wonder why you're assailing the source that I used (that s/he provided) when the article is filled with press releases as sources. Why don't you pitch in and clean this PR piece up ? Now why you're assuming bad faith on my part, in the face of obvious corprorate editing is a good question. The Dissident Aggressor 04:32, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
In the context of my statements above, the first reference I checked came up with failed verification and has been tagged as such.
I think this article needs to be gone over very carefully. I'm afraid that this smacks of corporate manipulation. The Dissident Aggressor 14:41, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered. |
Hi to anyone watching this page, also pinging DissidentAggressor, Ɱ, DGG, ChrisGualtieri and Jonpatterns who have either reviewed my suggestions here before, or with whom I had discussed this article late last year. I'd like to follow up on DissidentAggressor's previously noted concerns about the use of press releases in this article, also the length of the material discussing Acquisitions and the details included in the Criticism section, to see if we can work towards some improvements we can all agree upon.
Starting with (hopefully) the simplest of the above, the use of press releases, I'd like to propose some independent sources that can be used to replace the four press releases currently used in the article:
While I was reviewing the citations, I also noticed that there's currently a Blogspot blog used in the Other products section to support a detail about Blackboard Collaborate being used by the Open University. I don't think this information is crucial, so it (and the citation) could be removed.
Due to my conflict of interest with this article, since I have been working as a consultant to Blackboard Inc., it would be best for others to review the above and make the changes if they are appropriate. I hope that editors will be able to help with this. Thanks in advance, 16912 Rhiannon ( Talk · COI) 21:05, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered. |
Hi again! As I mentioned above, I'd like to help resolve the tag on the Mergers and acquisitions section of the article. The current section is, admittedly, quite lengthy. I think this speaks to Blackboard's history of growth being driven heavily by acquiring competitors and related companies—something that is frequently mentioned in the company's media coverage. Considering that the company is well known for its aggressive acquisition strategy, I do feel that the section should be retained. However, I can understand that it may come across as being a lot of detail that many readers may be less interested in.
Below, I've put together a more condensed draft for the section. What I've tried to do here is to give more context to the mentions of the acquisitions, while paring down the detail about individual acquisitions. That way, the impact of the acquisitions for the company's development and offerings is more clear: ie. readers are getting a better understanding of how these acquisitions have led to the Blackboard that exists today. I've also weeded out some of the smaller acquisitions that are perhaps less interesting to readers or impactful on the company's development. Can folks take a look over this and see if it would be a reasonable replacement for the existing section? I'm hoping that this draft will resolve the tag, or at least be a starting point towards it.
Blackboard has used the acquisition of other companies as a strategy to both limit competitors and enter new markets. [1] [2] [3] Between 2006 and 2012, the company spent more than $500 million on acquisitions. [3]
Competing learning management platforms that were acquired by Blackboard in order to absorb their users and reduce competition include: [4] George Washington University's course management software, Prometheus, in 2002; [5] and WebCT Inc., its largest rival in the education software industry, in 2005. [6] According to market research company Eduventures, the merger with WebCT increased the firm's share of the higher-education market to between 65 and 75 percent. [7] In 2009, the acquisition of ANGEL Learning, an education software developer, increased Blackboard's client base to nearly 6,000 educational institutions, companies and government agencies. [8]
The company has also made acquisitions in order to expand its product base with other education-related services and software. [4] Such acquisitions include: NTI Group in 2008, which became the basis for Blackboard Connect; [4] [9] providers of online and mobile collaboration tools, Wimba, Inc. and Elluminate, Inc. in 2010, to form Blackboard Collaborate; iStrategy in December 2010, which led to the creation of Blackboard Analytics; [10] Presidium Inc. in 2011, which developed into Blackboard Student Services. [11] Following the company's merger with Edline in 2011, [12] Edline was later renamed Blackboard Engage. [13] In March 2012, Blackboard acquired Moodlerooms Inc. and NetSpot of Adelaide, Australia, which then became the basis of Blackboard's Open Source Services division. [14] [15]
From January 2014 to April 2015, Blackboard acquired nine companies, [16] [17] including: MyEdu, an Austin-based online education company; [18] Perceptis, a provider of help desk and administrative services; [19] [20] CardSmith, a company that offered cards for student ID and on-campus payments; [21] Requestec, a provider of technology for VoIP, video conferencing and instant messaging; [22] and Schoolwires, a company that specialized in building school websites. [23]
References
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Blackboard has used the acquisition of other companies as a strategy to both limit competitors and enter new markets.<ref name=Empson12>{{cite news |title=Blackboard: With Both Co-founders Now Gone, It’s The End Of An Era For The Education Software Giant |author=Rip Empson |url= http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/18/with-both-co-founders-now-gone-its-the-end-of-an-era-for-education-software-giant-blackboard/ |work=[[TechCrunch]] |date=October 18, 2012 |accessdate=May 30, 2013}}</ref><ref name=Heussner13>{{cite news |title=A new Blackboard? 4 ways the ed tech giant’s new CEO hopes to win back market share |author=Ki Mae Heussner |url=https://gigaom.com/2013/07/12/a-new-blackboard-4-ways-the-ed-tech-giants-new-ceo-hopes-to-win-back-market-share/ |work=[[GigaOM]] |date=July 12, 2013 |accessdate=May 28, 2014}}</ref><ref name=Green12>{{cite news |title=The Long (and Open?) View on Blackboard |author=Kenneth C. Green |url=http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/digital-tweed/long-and-open-view-blackboard#sthash.b9UjZqN5.dpbs |work=[[Inside Higher Ed]] |date=April 2, 2012 |accessdate=May 28, 2014}}</ref> Between 2006 and 2012, the company spent more than $500 million on acquisitions.<ref name=Green12/>
Competing learning management platforms that were acquired by Blackboard in order to absorb their users and reduce competition include:<ref name=FlookJuly13>{{cite news |title=Rebuilding Blackboard: How Jay Bhatt plans to resurrect one of D.C.’s original tech startups |author=Bill Flook |url=http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/print-edition/2013/07/26/rebuilding-blackboard-how-jay-bhatt.html?page=all |work=[[American City Business Journals|Washington Business Journal]] |date=July 16, 2013 |accessdate=May 29, 2014}}</ref> [[George Washington University|George Washington University's]] course management software, Prometheus, in 2002;<ref name=Licamele02>{{cite news |title=GW’s Prometheus Merges with Software Developer Blackboard Inc. |author=Greg Licamele |url=http://www.gwu.edu/~bygeorge/march7ByG!/prometheus.html |work=By George! |date=March 5, 2002 |accessdate=May 28, 2014}}</ref> and [[WebCT]] Inc., its largest rival in the education software industry, in 2005.<ref name=EW05>{{cite news |title=Makers of Online Systems Merge; Blackboard buys up rival in course-handling market |magazine=Education Week |date=October 26, 2005 |volume=25 |issue=9 |page=8}}</ref> According to market research company Eduventures, the merger with WebCT increased the firm's share of the higher-education market to between 65 and 75 percent.<ref name=Carnevale>{{cite news |title=Justice Department Sees No Antitrust Concerns in Blackboard's Plan to Take Over WebCT |first=Dan |last=Carnevale |newspaper=The Chronicle of Higher Education |isbn= |issn= |oclc= |pmid= |pmd= |bibcode= |id= |date=February 17, 2006 |page=37 |volume=52 |issue=24}}</ref> In 2009, the acquisition of [[ANGEL Learning]], an education software developer, increased Blackboard's client base to nearly 6,000 educational institutions, companies and government agencies.<ref name=Kennedy09>{{cite news |title=Blackboard Inc.Purchases Education Software Developer
|first=Kathleen |last=Kennedy |newspaper=Education Week |date=May 20, 2009 |page=4 |volume=28 |issue=32}}</ref>
The company has also made acquisitions in order to expand its product base with other education-related services and software.<ref name=FlookJuly13/> Such acquisitions include: NTI Group in 2008, which became the basis for Blackboard Connect;<ref name=FlookJuly13/><ref name=Mider08>{{cite news |title=Blackboard to Buy NTI, Alert Maker, for $182 Million (Update1) |author=Zachary R. Mider |url=http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?sid=a0IWy6J.gKmY&pid=newsarchive |work=[[Bloomberg L.P.|Bloomberg]] |date=January 14, 2008 |accessdate=May 29, 2014}}</ref> providers of online and mobile collaboration tools, Wimba, Inc. and Elluminate, Inc. in 2010, to form Blackboard Collaborate; iStrategy in December 2010, which led to the creation of Blackboard Analytics;<ref name=Kolowich>{{cite news |title=Blackboard's Next Phase |first=Steve |last=Kolowich |url=http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/02/22/blackboard_evolves_its_business_strategy_in_light_of_market_saturation_in_higher_ed |newspaper=Inside Higher Ed |date=February 22, 2011 |accessdate=April 10, 2011}}</ref> Presidium Inc. in 2011, which developed into Blackboard Student Services.<ref name=Pres>{{cite news |title=In Bid to Expand Into Student Services, Blackboard Buys Presidium |first=Jeff |last=Young |url=http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/in-bid-to-expand-into-student-services-blackboard-buys-presidium/28965 |newspaper=The Chronicle of Higher Education |date=January 12, 2011 |accessdate=August 30, 2011}}</ref> Following the company's merger with [[Edline]] in 2011,<ref name=Clabaugh11>{{cite news |title=Blackboard private, merges with Edline |author=Jeff Clabaugh |url=http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2011/10/05/blackboard-private-merges-with-edline.html |work=[[American City Business Journals|Washington Business Journal]] |date=October 5, 2011|accessdate=May 17, 2013}}</ref> Edline was later renamed Blackboard Engage.<ref name=Giovacco11>{{cite news |title=Providence Increases Blackboard Buyout Loan as Outflows Subside |author=Krista Giovacco |url=http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-09-09/providence-increases-blackboard-buyout-loan-as-outflows-subside.html |work=[[Businessweek]] |date=September 9, 2011 |accessdate=May 17, 2013}}</ref> In March 2012, Blackboard acquired Moodlerooms Inc. and NetSpot of [[Adelaide]], Australia, which then became the basis of Blackboard's Open Source Services division.<ref name=Clabaugh>{{cite news |title=Blackboard makes Moodle acquisitions |author=Jeff Clabaugh |url=http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2012/03/26/blackboard-makes-moodle-acquisitions.html |work=[[American City Business Journals|Washington Business Journal]] |date=March 26, 2012 |accessdate=September 5, 2014}}</ref><ref name=Kolowich12>{{cite news |title=Blackboard's Open-Source Pivot |author=Steve Kolowich |url=http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/03/27/blackboard-buys-moodlerooms-creates-open-source-division#sthash.eds4ewfp.dpbs |work=[[Inside Higher Ed]]|date=March 27, 2012 |accessdate=May 28, 2014}}</ref>
I've mentioned previously, but just to be crystal clear: I'm here as a consultant to Blackboard and due to that COI I will not make any edits to the article. Instead, I hope to discuss the draft here and I'm very much open to feedback and / or additional suggestions for improving this section. Please let me know if you have any questions or thoughts on how best to address the Mergers and acquisitions information. Thanks, 16912 Rhiannon ( Talk · COI) 19:37, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered. |
Hi again, all. In my previous post above, I'd noted that I'd like to discuss the Criticism section of the article, and I'm now returning to that topic. Generally, I'm of the opinion that criticism or controversy sections should be avoided, per WP:CRITS, and wonder if editors would be in favor of integrating the information from the Criticism into sections of the article where it might best fit.
If so, here is my suggestion for placing the material within other sections:
On the other hand, I understand if other editors feel that a dedicated section is the best place to collate criticism of the company and its products. If it is preferable to retain the Criticism section, then I'd like to suggest a small addition and a few adjustments to the existing text:
The below shows the section with my suggestions in green:
According to a TechCrunch article from 2012, despite its success, Blackboard had become "one of the most disliked — even detested — companies in education." [1] In December 2011, Fast Company reported that 93% of respondents to the Amplicate customer opinion survey "hate" the company. [2]
The company's products' user interfaces became "infamous as a part of academic life that was to be endured, not enjoyed" according to TechCrunch writer Rip Empson in 2014. [3] According to EdSurge, as of 2015, the company was in the process of updating its learning management system and the user interface within it, noting that navigation of the latter had been a cause of "dismay" for long-time users. [4] [5]References
Empson14
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).According to a ''TechCrunch'' article from 2012, despite its success, Blackboard had become "one of the most disliked — even detested — companies in education."<ref name=Empson-18-Oct-2012>{{cite news|last1=Empson|first1=Rip|title=Blackboard: With Both Co-founders Now Gone, It’s The End Of An Era For The Education Software Giant|url=http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/18/with-both-co-founders-now-gone-its-the-end-of-an-era-for-education-software-giant-blackboard/|accessdate=13 December 2014|publisher=[[Techcrunch]]|date=18 October 2012}}</ref> In December 2011, ''[[Fast Company (magazine)|Fast Company]]'' reported that 93% of respondents to the Amplicate customer opinion survey "hate" the company.<ref name=kamenetz-13-dec-14>{{cite news|last1=Kamenetz|first1=Anya|title=The Ingenious Business Model Behind Coursekit, A Tumblr For Higher Education|url=http://www.fastcompany.com/1799173/ingenious-business-model-behind-coursekit-tumblr-higher-education|accessdate=13 December 2014|work=[[Fast Company (magazine)|Fast Company]]}}</ref>
Once again, I won't make any of these edits myself due to my COI, so I encourage others to review, offer their thoughts and make such edits as are most appropriate. Thanks, 16912 Rhiannon ( Talk · COI) 22:07, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
Appreciate all the input here and thanks NQ for your edits. I hope that if there are any disagreements about these changes, editors can discuss it here. 16912 Rhiannon ( Talk · COI) 16:33, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
It looks like the market share statistics are from the techcrunch article that's a few years old now, and which was likely from a company press release. While BB likely peaked at around 75% marketshare, the best market data I can find seems to indicate that their higher ed market share has steadily declined and is now closer to 34% (rather than 75%). This source is only counting institutions with over 500 FTE - http://edutechnica.com/2016/10/03/4th-annual-lms-data-update/
Not sure on K12 data, but I imagine that it's now similarly out of date. You can see the longer term higher ed trend here http://mfeldstein.com/state-higher-ed-lms-market-spring-2016/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.162.246.204 ( talk) 23:28, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
In the UK, Moodle is by far the dominant player in the VLE environment, and I suspect this might be true in the US too. There has been a steady trend in the last 15 years of universities who had been on WebCT moving to Moodle and next to no move in the other direction. This is anecdotal / first hand, but at an annual MoodleMoot in the UK I chatted about this during the lunch break to a Blackboard representative on one of the vendor stands that were provided display space. He confirmed that the Blackboard customer base had, indeed, declined steadily for a number of years and that a lot of their revenue now comes from providing support to Moodle sites.
The information in the article is clearly well out of date. Perhaps there are other, more up-to-date sources that could provide a picture of current market share. Moodle appears to have been dominant, globally, for a number of years. See, for example, https://mfeldstein.wpengine.com/academic-lms-market-share-view-across-four-global-regions/