It's time for the downfall of Blackboard

When founders Mathew Pittinsky and Michael Chasen started Blackboard LLC in 1997 they were innovators. They were pioneers tackling the brand new problem of online education.

Blackboard's contribution to online education can't be questioned. They packaged the necessary set of tools for creating and managing an online classroom and marketed it well. But it never was very good.

The interface has always been clunky and unintuitive. The discussion board works. But it could be better. The gradebook works. But it could certainly be better. You could say that about nearly every feature in Blackboard.

As one college staff member explained, "although it doesn't do any one thing the best, it does bundle tools together in a way that is 'good enough'."

In recent years Blackboard added blogs and wikis to the program in order to slap the Web 2.0 buzzword on it. But the blog and wiki are that in name only. They don't feel like wikis or blogs. They're just a repackaging of the discussion board with a new name.

It's simply "good enough." But will it always be good enough?

As the 2010 Trends in eLearning study [pdf] concluded, "The learning management system (LMS) market remains volatile." The same study has found that around 1/3 of schools have said they are considering switching their LMS for 5 years running.

Although Blackboard remains hold of over half the LMS market, largely due to the acquisitions of WebCT and Angel, their market share is continuing to dwindle. Their share took a 6.5% drop from 2009 to 2010. And open source options like Moodle and Sakai are continuing to gain.

The market is ready to be disrupted. LMS startups like Canvas look interesting. But which product will ultimately emerge?

It's time for a highly usable LMS that replicates the modern Web experience.

Blackboard isn't good enough anymore.