This always seems to come up in edupunk conversations, and seems to be one of the main attacks against edupunk, even from great people who I respect no end -- hey, they'll say, we can't have a knee-jerk reaction against corporate solutions. They aren't necessarily evil.
It may surprise you, but I completely agree. In fact, I'll go one step further, corporations are never evil.
Corporations are the wrong thing to be looking at. They aren't evil or good -- they merely *are*. It's the environment and the market that needs to be considered.
Markets are healthy or sick. And when they are sick, due to patent silliness, an oversupply of easy credit, or lack of regulation, all corporations will end up doing things against the public good.
Right now the reason the LMS market is sick is that Blackboard has no natural predators, due to a variety of factors, but primarily due to the particular structure of university purchasing systems combined with some early advantages Blackboard possessed (I do not see the patent issue, as awful as it is for the current market, as the main reason for their dominance). Blackboard is not evil, but its current situation is like a snakehead dropped in the Potomac to feed. And sitting around deciding whether it deserves to eat all those other fish is beside the point.
- Snakehead 1.0. Image via Wikipedia
You see, I'm willing to admit, from a purchasing standpoint, that this feature or that feature of NG will improve the lives of students. I don't see much indication that Blackboard has gotten past their core mission as an access control company, but, hey, more amazing transformations have happened. I think they don't get openess in a really fundamental way, but still, if it became in their interest to do so, they could be quick learners.
All that is interesting, and fodder for future blog posts. But no matter what the value of Blackboard's individual actions, the fact is the LMS market ecosystem is sick, and will remain sick until Blackboard develops natural predators. I'm not really interested in the feature list of Snakehead 2.0. Compared to the larger context, the feature list is a minor point.
So I thank the gods for people like Jim Groom, the killer catfish who jumps on their every move, and scraps it up against all odds. People will say he isn't reasonable, but when you are trying to address a balance of power issue, it doesn't always pay to be reasonable. Sometimes you just gotta pull the rope as long and hard as you can.
Jim does that every day, here's to him.
Update: Jim challenges me in the comments, and in response I have to reformulate. Blackboard is not a snakehead in a peaceful pond, a fish out of water as it were. Blackboard is what happens when a teaching technology company evolves to conform to the enterprise software pond. It's attributes that we dislike are results of the enterprise purchasing system, not the causes of the environment, though they may perpetuate it.
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4 comments
Mike,
You are way too kind, but I do have to say that I entirely agree with
you that I am unreasonable. I also agree that most of the issues are
centered around the question of power and empowerment. And for me the
legal battles are a key factor in this, as are the misinformation and
corporate co-opting. I don't think the market takes care of itself, I
think it is artificially constructed for advantages and
disadvantages—and those of us who work towards innovation in teaching
and technology feel those disadvantages at a core, structural level. A
systemic issue that is born out of this reality might be erroneously
naturalized with your examples. This isn't a natural process, it is
unnatural. Hence the fact that the explosion of the web and
information has been rhetorically denatured by institutions who want
to protect themselves from the chaos of resources and possibilities.
Bb and their ilk benefit from this culture of fear, because they frame
the solutions and build the integrated bridges to no where. And while
the discussion shouldn't necessarily be as simple as good
corporation/bad corporation, sometimes the manifestation of power can
be located there and be manipulated, unnaturally, to keep it there.
Power is a series of relations, and those relations work best when
they are invisible, or rather untraceable. What shocks me is how
transparent a corporation like Bb has been about the abuses of its
power with little or no push back from the educational community (not
unlike the state of indentured servitude that most adjuncts find
themselves in). You are absolutely right: universities, colleges, and
K-12 are in bed with vendors all over the country and the world, and
are responsible for a lion's share for the dearth of creativity and
innovation within their walls. But, when I speak of these things I
don't speak from an administrative purview, but a space that is on the
level with a single course or professor or student. That view is
seldom if ever framed in these conversations, and it is there that the
change will occur. Let the administrations and corporations immolate
themselves, the survivalists will not only abide in the trying times
ahead, they will thrive!!! Individual experience creatively narrated
scales very well, efficiency and a bottom line logic of teaching and
learning will ultimately fail –and my fear is the latter will triumph
under poor leadership putting our educational institutions in imminent
danger.
You may be right that my example is over-naturalized. Let's call Blackboard a cheetah in the Magic Kingdom, eh?
The environment that helped to create this mess was the vendor system and enterprise purchasing process -- and the historical events that put the LMS in that side of the house. There was a point, somewhere in 1998/99 where it didn't have to be that way. Maybe even 2000. There was a good healthy discussion about worldware, and simulations, and educational gaming.
But I think maybe you miss how it was that environment that Blackboard evolved in which turned it into the fear-mongering demagogue it often becomes. Because once it was decided this was an enterprise purchase, under IT becuase of the technical issues and troster integration, everything else follows. To thrive in that enterprise environment, it did what enterprise software companies do:
* Create risks to be scared of. Look at server sales, another enterprise IT decison. Remember the "five nines"? God help you if your server didn't have five nines of uptime when others did. Purchase the wrong one, watch it go down. Career over.
* Seal the borders. A corrollary of the above. But important.
* Close the system. As much as we knock Microsoft word, the fact is consumer software supports competitors software -- even on export -- as a necessary part of survival. That's because during the growth period it's crucial that your system survive in a multimode environment. All corporate software is about lock-in, but enterprise software, because it deals with cross-site implementations, takes it to new levels.
So my initial analysis is actually wrong -- Blackboard is not a snakehead. It's what happens when a learning technology company evolves in an enterprise software pond. It's fear-mongering, lock-in, and resistance to change are the result of it adapting quite well to an Enterprise environment.
This, incidentally, is why I believe the break through for Open Ed technologies like WordPress will be when we get a Red Hat style company to market them -- but that's another post.
So does that mean we are making parties and seeking to defeat the ancient undead dragon, or do I have video games on the brain? Something about comparing corporations to groups of magic users in a fantasy realm fits this conversation, particularly the idea of them trying to keep their behemoth living that much longer for profit and the greater good, depending on who you ask.
I might go with another analogy.
Kudzu. Blackboard is kudzu. Creeping, massive and insidious.
It is an introduced organism brought in for a specific function (management) without any real thought as to the consequences. Like kudzu it has no natural predators and has proliferated to the detriment of the environment. It kills off all kinds of good things and, while useful in certain ways, does far more damage than it does good.
In addition it's hard to stomp out once it gains a foothold and costs a fortune to control.
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