You may have seen the article “PSU prepares to replace Blackboard” in the Emerald (ODE,  Feb. 26). Interesting article. One point that the article misses is that Portland State University was stuck with a very old version of “Blackboard,” actually a version of WebCT Campus Edition.
The company Blackboard, Inc., bought WebCT and took over their product line, but did not continue to develop it. Instead, they have encouraged the WebCT customers to switch to its very different main Blackboard product line, which over time, has had lots of upgrades including some new features borrowed from WebCT. PSU was in a hard place, without any easy upgrade path, and hence with a very old version of their software. As I recall, they were seriously looking at Sakai before they settled on Desire2Learn. I think they probably made a quite reasonable choice.
One thing I particularly liked about the article is the student view that consistent and widespread use of the CMS is more important than what particular CMS you use. Perhaps, unfortunately, there’s a tension between consistency and academic freedom and faculty innovation. But at least the UO, with its widespread adoption of Blackboard, is in better shape than PSU was.
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