Ohio University's summer Blackboard update will ultimately save hundreds of thousands of dollars for the school each year, but some students and faculty still struggle to learn the site.
When OU's Office of Information Technology decided to switch from Blackboard 7 to Blackboard 9 June 16, it also stopped an annual fee of $200,000 for website maintenance. Blackboard develops, licenses and supports software that allows its users to view and post course-related items such as syllabi and class readings.
OU now will pay about $35,000 for Blackboard 9, said IT Communications Manager Sean O'Malley.
Although the switch was part of the department's budget cuts, moving maintenance in-house will allow the staff to handle problems faster, he said.
Hosting Blackboard ourselves should provide faster resolution of problems or outages since our staff are on site and on call
O'Malley said. It should eliminate the problems we had last year with CatMail sometimes putting Blackboard e-mails into the Junk folder ... our students weren't real happy with that.
Some Blackboard 9 features include easier access to the control panel for instructors and a simpler layout, according to OU's website.
Stan Alost, assistant director and associate professor for the School of Visual Communications, said he still is growing accustomed to Blackboard 9.
There are some things that I think are better and there are some things that I don't think are functioning terribly well. There are so many bells and whistles that it is harder to get to the stuff I need Alost said.
The steps required to set up a class can be excessive, Alost said. Courses should be available for students to view automatically, rather than making teachers activate the course, he added.
To me it was hilariously bad
because the whole point was for students to see it
Alost said.
Nick Patrick, a sophomore studying nursing, said Blackboard is essentially the same.
I guess it kind of looks sleeker and more up to date
but for me it isn't much different
Patrick said.
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Pat Holmes
