It’s sometimes useful to sample the business perspective on the proprietary VLE world. Take for instance Business Week’s analysis of Blackboard’s financial health (7 Feb 2006). This is a world away from the concerns of those actually using these products, but such analyses provide an essential reminder why these products exist, and sometimes cease to exist. But, with the US Department of Justice’s approval for the ‘merger’ of Blackboard and WebCT (the companies, not the technology), for the institutions who bought into WebCT there are now, surely, more pressing concerns? Like, What do we do now?
The only option that isn’t a real option is to do nothing. Of course the account managers for Blackboard/WebCT will work overtime to reassure their portofolio of institutions that there’s no reason to worry and that it’s near ‘business a usual’. The last thing that’s wanted here is a mass migration from WebCT (37% of the UK current installed base) because all of those WebCT accounts are essential to the future financial well-being of Blackboard (43% of the current UK installed base). What with new kids on the block Moodle and Bodington apparently each taking 8% of the UK installed base, and rising, then consolidation is the name of the game.
Incidentally, the source of the above data is the UCISA VLE Surveys (PDF). The UCISA VLE Survey provides a useful, but perhaps limited, overview. Why?
First, there were 85 responses from HEIs to the UCISA March 2005 survey. But there are 130 HEI’s funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), 4 funded by the Department for Employment and Learning Northern Ireland (DELNI), 20 funded by the Scottish Funding Council, and 12 funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW). So, at best we appear to be looking at around a 50% response rate from UK Higher Education.
Second, the 2005 survey claimed it wished to “… move the vocabularly away from the poorly understood term MLE to the more widely accepted term e-learning.” (page 4). But yet the focus of the survey remained the VLE, i.e. e-learning was being equated to the VLE. And so we search in vain for mention weblogs, wikis, asynchoronous discussion, instant messaging, learning object repositories, image archives, or JISC e-tools, etc, and can only assume these play no part in the UCISA survey’s perception of e-learning. We are, instead, left with the memorable sound bite that 95% of HEI respondents (n=85) in the 2005 survey use VLEs of some kind.
But, putting these two (pretty major) caveats aside, the UCISA VLE Survey, nevertheless, provides us with some useful information about VLE use (but let’s not confuse that with e-learning) in UK Higher Education Instiutitons. So now let’s get back to Blackboard and WebCT.
The reality is that Blackboard cannot sustain the development of two ‘complementary’ (competing) product lines in the medium to long-term. At the same time, it cannot afford to destabilize either its existing customer base or its newly acquired WebCT one. But, nevertheless, two product lines will, eventually, have to become one. So we can anticipate Blackboard expending considerable amounts of energy in reassuring their inherited WebCT customer base that all will be well.
A couple of things work in Blackboard’s favour. It’s highly unlikely that institutions had contingency plans ready for just such ’emergencies’ and so the most likely response from institutions (and I’ve heard it often) is denial that there’s a problem. This is understandable, because buying into any system at enterprise level is enormously costly in financial, effort and reputational terms. Rapid extraction is just not feasible and so the architects of this commercial ‘merger’ are relying on this in-built inertia to get them over this potentially dangerous financial hiatus. They undoubtedly believe that the WebCT institutions are, in effect, ‘beached’ and are now totally dependent on the efforts of Blackboard to ‘rescue’ them.
The rescue could take many forms. Let’s consider a few possibilities, or at least fly some kites (Note: there is no insider knowledge here, it’s pure conjecture:)
Blackboard will offer preferential terms to existing WebCT users to migrate to version x of their BB product. Along with this financial incentive will come free migration toolkits and documentation, supplemented by low/no cost migration seminars to ease the pain. There will come a point, however, when they eventually announce that they can no longer support WebCT and so the migration resistant rump could be cast adrift.
Blackboard will being to include some aspects of WebCT functionality in new versions of Blackboard. Carried to the ultimate of imagination a new merged product with a new name could be born … I leave you, dear reader, to give it a birth name:)
What then of WebCT, the product? It could, I suppose, be offered as freeware or even open source, but that’s kind of risky from two points of view. First, if there’s a sufficiently knowledgeable rump who refuse to migrate to Blackboard x they could form the type of open-source co-operative who could end up competing more effectively in the Blackboard space. Second, nobody may want it, because now there are alternative open source solutions around that didn’t exist when WebCT first came onto the scene.
So the ideal from Blackboard’s perspective would be relatively docile and static WebCT user-base who simply wait for the solution to emerge. And they may get what they want. On the institution side, the same reassuring messages are undoubtedly be emanating from those charged with creating and maintaining the e-learning infrastructure and support system and who don’t want to be faced with an attempted exodus from a system they have spent perhaps years building and supporting. No, Blackboard wants those 37% (and the equivalent accounts in other countries) and inertia is likely to get them it. But are there really any alternatives to the future that Blackboard will plan for them?
As regular readers of Auricle will know I’ve never ceased to find it interesting how a sector made up of institutions that otherwise pride themselves on their diversity and independence have so willingingly bound such a significant part of their missions to the fortunes and decision making of commercial third parties. It has been equally interesting how quickly institutions have been prepared to lock themselves into enterprise class proprietary Learning Management Systems (aka VLEs) when the technology, and our understanding of its organizational impact, has been so relatively immature. An emphasis on the Management (or should that be Adminstration?) in the Learning Management System perhaps contains the explanation for the rapid uptake and also perhaps explains, in part, the reasons for the inertia. In terms of organisational impact I’ve frequently cited and quoted from the work of Cornford and Pollock who emphasize how the organisation adjusts its processes and practices to meeting the needs to the technology and not vice versa, i.e. organisations end up serving the ‘machine’.
… the application of the new technologies is generating a myriad of demands for re-institutionalisation of the university as a far more ‘corporate’, one might even say concrete, kind of organization … (in Cornford J (2000) The Virtual University is (paradoxically) the University Made Concrete.
… universities may be increasingly forced to consider institutional changes in order to maintain alignment with the system. (in Implications of Enterprise Resource Planning Systems for Universities: An Analysis of Benefits and Risks, Observatory on Borderless Higher Education, Issue 3, p13, April 2005). The OBHE is a subscription service.
So even though this thing we now call e-learning has been around for such a relatively short time it’s going to be kind of hard for the WebCT 37% to think radical and see the problem (because that’s what it is) as an opportunity (because that’s what it is) to rethink their whole approach to e-learnng infrastructure building and support. The really radical could perhaps consider whether a highly centralized e-learning infrastructure is appropriate or necessary at all. The more conservative could perhaps take the opportunity to consider the wisdom of being part of any commercial enterprise’s portfolio of accounts and become part of the growing community of open source VLE users. But others will take the line of least resistance, take the Blackboard migration offer that will eventually appear and hope that history doesn’t repeat itself with another merger.
What do I think they should do?
Simple. First, acknowledge they’ve got a problem. Don’t be passive and wait for a vendor to determine your future. See this as an opportunity to review your options. Take some risks and don’t just stick with the status quo. I’ve suggested in previous Auricle postings that even if a magic wand was to remove all, what we now call VLEs, from the planet then e-learning would still survive, and may even thrive. If you still want to go down the VLE route then there’s now lots of choice, whether that be proprietary or open source. What matters more is the size, likely growth trend, and commitment of the user, support and developer community that supports a ‘product’ rather than whether its open source or proprietary.
What the Blackboard/WebCT ‘merger’ demonstrates, however, is that you, the users, are not in charge. You were not consulted. The US Department of Justice was. Enough said.
Any views expressed in this Auricle posting are mine and should not be construed as necessarily representing the views of any other individual or organisation.
