Blackboard plus Angel

The most dramatic development in the commercial LMS world since the 2005 announcement of the Blackboard WebCT merger was the announcement this week of the Blackboard Angel merger. Our university had the typical LMS committee to decide the future LMS for the university. We ran both the Blackboard classic system and the Blackboard CE version. We wanted to have an integrated LMS for the whole university. This consisted of, with the exception of one member, folks that had never run or taught with an LMS. The committee was stacked with Blackboard critics.

In March I first talked with Angel reps in the context of a possible switch to Angel from Blackboard. The Angel folks were some of the most responsive software vendors I had dealt with since the days of WebCT. But I still liked the Blackboard software better. Angel is a good system but I thought the promise of Blackboard NG version 10, now called Blackboard Learn, offered more promise of Web 2.0 and a more robust technical system.

Since the WebCT days I have grown to know and respect many folks that work for Blackboard. At first it was very difficult to adjust to the merged company and reduced customer support. But I think Blackboard really listened to the WebCT customers and the complaints about how bad support was that last six months of 2006. At the Boston conference the customer support folks heard lots and lots of complaints from the WebCT base. After that conference in summer 2007, things changed for the better.

So now the LMS committee has decided in late March to switch to Angel for Blackboard classic users but also to continue Blackboard CE for one year to "ease" the transition. So now we have Angel and BB CE. Then the merger comes.

I have always liked Blackboard CE as a product so now do we all go to NG? How do we tell faculty they have to switch to Angel system, owned now by Blackboard, and then switch again to a future combined product?

Confusing for us all....