[edgyswingset]

Blackboard is an actual piece of shit, though. It's slow, still has trouble with most browsers, and doesn't get any of its features right. The four years of crap I had to put up with for that site are still fresh in my mind.

To be a bit more solution-oriented, most students and teachers don't care about the majority of what BB offers. They want:

* Upload and administer documents

* Assign grades to assignments

* Access Control to the above

* Speed across all browsers for the above

If Github can get these right, I don't see why they couldn't have a strong offering.

[ascagnel_]

Blackboard is the perfect example of buying by checkboxes: it ticks the most boxes, but since the person who buys the software rarely has to use it (if it all), they don't care that it does all those things terribly.

[pearjuice]

Blackboard is so shit that sometimes you look at it and out loudly say "what the fuck is this shit and who thought it was a good idea?". I remember trying to upload a document, dragging the file to the upload button and the file opening in the browser. Whereas if they used the standard _HTML4_ file input type, you can drag files on top of them to select them without browsing to its location.

I cruise without Java and Flash so it must have been some sort of hacked together proprietary upload button which triggered a regular file dialog anyway (JavaScript was enabled, I think). And that's just the tip of the iceberg. If there's any space to disrupt it's e-learning, but that's probably more of a deal-cutting job with major institutions than having an objectively better (looking) product.

[Navarr]

I run into that first problem literally all over the web. It is the crux of me.

Blackboard is truly terrible

[dublinben]

It would be nice if respecting student privacy was one of the main requirements of a system like this.

[jessaustin]

Serious question: what aspects of student privacy can't be covered by "Access Control" mentioned above?

[edgyswingset]

I could see a company doing something shady like collecting metrics on students across different types of classes to eventually sell to someone. I can't for the life of me understand why that kind of data would be valuable, but I'm sure someone could make use of student metrics for advertising purposes.

[rlorenzo]

A company that creates discussions boards for courses is already doing that. They are called Piazza (https://piazza.com/) and used the student data they have been collecting to Piazza Careers: https://recruiting.piazza.com/

It has caused some heated discussions at our university regarding student privacy.

[edgyswingset]

Yep, I used Piazza extensively in school. As a tool, it was actually pretty good and students used it heavily. Unfortunately when they shifted their focus to selling students to top companies it soured the taste in my mouth a bit.

I see a lot of positives in that system, but it feels like a way for companies to more easily ignore candidates who aren't from top schools. My concern would be further ostracizing qualified students who don't go to top schools.

[jessaustin]

Companies might want to look at data, but so long as they aren't bribing teachers into sharing data from private repos, what can they do?