Source: Blackboard Inc. Sneak Preview of Project NG
Several Blackboard- and Desire2Learn related items come my way in the last few weeks, but holiday absence prevented me from using them.
First, two long posts by Jim Farmer on Michael Feldstein's e-Literate blog:
- 11 August - about Blackboard software licences;
- 27 August - about Blackboard's financial performance (with some discussion about the company's UK market share, based on a comparison between UCISA's 2005 and 2007 CIS surveys).
Second, a slick and impressive promotional video from Blackboard about its "Next Generation" product - known as Blackboard NG - which has been described to me by someone on the inside of Blackboard as "light years ahead of Blackboard 8.0" (see also Nial Sclater's description of a talk about NG in Manchester earlier this year). I watched each of its eight "chapters".
My gut feeling, based mainly on my previous experience of seeing presentations by vendors about software under development, is that what is on show remains somewhat aspirational; and a cynic would say that this is consistent with Blackboard's fleeting legal disclaimer at the start of the promotional video, captured at the head of this post. Certainly Blackboard seems to have understood the way that e-learning is going, with users (be they learners or teachers) needing to be in control of the resources they access, and of which tools they use. But that said, developers of Open Source or proprietary e-learning systems are shooting at a moving target to make products that can really adapt to take account of the changing "leading edge" features of the Web, and the associated changing user behaviours. And in any case, will it be the user's software that forms the core of their learning environment, or will it be software provided by their institution?
Finally, patent buffs may be interested in this article "The Surprising Efficacy of Inter Partes Reexaminations: An Analysis of the Factors Responsible For Its 73% Patent Kill Rate And How To Properly Defend Against It" [162 kB PDF], by Andrew S. Baluch and Stephen B. Maebius, who work as Patent Attorneys for Foley & Lardner LLP, the company representing Desire2Learn in Blackboard's patent infringement claim against D2L. (An inter partes re-examination forms part of D2L's defensive strategy.) One of the article's findings is that in the nearly nine years since the inter partes re-examination option became available in the US, over half of the contested re-examinations have resulted in the re-examined patent being ruled completely invalid. Bear in mind, however, that the number of cases embraced by the data is only a small proportion of the total number of inter partes re-examinations, so there is no reason to assume that the same "kill rate" will apply to the re-examination cases that have yet to be concluded.
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