Bye Bye Beachboard
Cal State Long Beach searches for an alternative to Beachboard for the next school year, looking at replacements like Moodle and Angel
Rosaura Figueroa
Issue date: 12/1/08 Section: In Depth
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Frustrations over technical issues has led Cal State Long Beach to seek alternatives to Blackboard-the company that provides the platform for Beachboard. The university is hoping that a change in platform will improve Beachboard functionality. According to Don Gardner, Associate Vice President for Academic Technology, the university was in the process of searching for a replacement for Blackboard when he arrived last February. Gardner said the university was having "severe support issues in the early part of the spring semester. Blackboard and therefore Beachboard was going down on a regular basis, in fact it was going down every night for a couple of hours at a time."
Seu Park, a graduate student in linguistics and a Beachboard support staff employee, described a day that epitomizes the extent of the Blackboard problem during that period.
"There was one day that it [Beachboard] was down on a Friday and we received like 100 calls and e-mails that day," Park said. "Like two or three lines were ringing at the same time."
Gardner also noted Blackboard's unwillingness to address the situation. "Unfortunately, the company was relatively unresponsive to the problems. It took a major effort to get them [Blackboard] to respond to those issues."
Periodic crashes with the Blackboard platform isn't the only reason CSULB is looking for a switch. The CSU system has been evaluating Learning Management Systems (LMSs) to ensure that they are in compliance with the Accessibility Technology Initiative (ATI) mandate.
"The Blackboard product that we use was determined by that process to be not ATI complaint," Gardner said. "We have a commitment to achieve accessibility for all the learning management courses as soon as possible."
The CSU system evaluated various companies and has narrowed it down to two products that are ATI compliant one is a commercial product by Angel. The other is an open source product called Moodle. These are the two choices that the CSULB task force-a committee of approximately 50 faculty, student and staff volunteers-has been evaluating.
Viewing Comments 1 - 9 of 9
Prospector Pete
posted 1/06/09 @ 6:26 PM PST
This is absolutely hilarious. CSU Long Beach is about to bite that hand that feeds - and thinking they are firing Blackboard is an even bigger joke. They just bought deeply into the Blackboard ConnectEd system for emergency notifications, AND they have been a Blackboard Transaction system customer for over 10 years and growing stronger! What they should have done is attempt to work out a single contract for ALL of their Blackboard systems instead of letting Blackboard boss them around with 3 seperate sales reps with 3 seperate contracts getting the max all the time. (Continued…)
Mallory
posted 1/20/09 @ 12:51 PM PST
As a student I worked on several LMS platforms such as Blackboard, Moodle, and WebCT - all had nice features, but never seemed to "reel" me in. Often times, CSU Northridge (who used webCT) would crash - leaving me and other online students frustrated. (Continued…)
Tracey
posted 1/22/09 @ 1:12 PM PST
Wow i read this and was so confused at first cause Beachboard is my last nme =P
Alison Worth
posted 3/05/09 @ 8:44 AM PST
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