Course Management Systems

Course Management System isn't as much a technology as it is a marketing tool. Technologically they are little more than a core database application with some features thrown in, like sombody else's chat applets and discussion boards. Blackboard, the market leader, is actually built on an open source SQL database product. It ain't rocket science. It's business.

WebCT, the Pepsi to Blackboard's Coke, was built by computer science faculty at the University of British Columbia to cash in on the Internet boom. Blackboard, which just happens to have Arthur Levine on their board, was started at Cornell by some students. Neither one is all that technologically sophisticated on closer look, but business is business. Many colleges were developing products that were at least as good, but the commerical imperative has knocked many of them out of contention. Blackboard killed Prometheus by buying it away from George Washinton University to strangle it into oblivion. Death by acquisition. There will be no Dr. Pepper or Royal Crown Cola if our friends at Blackboard can do anything about it. Coke for everybody!

Blackboard will be going public soon with an IPO and has in place a significant business relationship with the Ministry of Education in China. WebCT was picked up by Universal Learning Technology, which then adopted their name. Both companies intend to transform education by making their stockholders rich. The problem with that is that transformation doesn't just mean turning sh*t into gold; it can also mean turning gold into sh*t. Not all transformations are good ones. The CMS business is also turning out to be not as lucrative as initially though back during the bubble, so now Blackboard wants to do everything, such as run the big administrative databases used for registration and financial aid. They want to Super Size their offerings to college administrators.

Will this work? Both Coke and Pepsi screwed up by not anticipating Snapple. No matter what Bloomberg says, Snapple is no better for you than Coke, but it did bite into the market. I think blogging software and the like will probably threaten CMS systems with something that they didn't anticipate. Also, hackers are an ornery bunch. Some computer science students in love with Linus Torvalds will come up with something better.

And there is another problem. Meatspace still has something going for it over cyberspace. People once thought that our higher education institutions would be clobbered by Blackboards of the world and that we would all flock to Western Governors University, Fathom, or the University of Phoenix in cyberspace. Well, meatspace has the advantage that you can get away from your parents, try some recreational pharmaceuticals, go to the Ani DiFranco concert at the student union and get some pretty strange tatoos and piercings in a city where nobody knows you. Try that on the Apple in your room at home with mom wondering what is wrong with you. One of the biggest outcomes of the Internet for universities isn't the ubiquity of CMS technology, but the boom in new student centers and recreational facilities to make them more competitive. And another big change? Snack bars with decent coffee in the library. Never would have happened without the Internet. Latte anyone?