Bye Bye Beachboard

UPDATE: After hearing recommendations from the evaluation task force, Karen L. Gould, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs has announced that CSULB will adopt ANGEL as its new Learning Management System. The migration away from Blackboard to ANGEL is expected to be complete by January 2010.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.

"We opened the evaluation process up to anyone who was interested. We needed to make sure that some entities were represented," Gardner said.

The task force has been collecting data and using an online sandbox to try out both products. For the most part it seems that Moodle and Angel have a relatively similar layout.

"I like both of them," said Garcia. "Honestly, you just have to get used to it [new product]. It looks complicated but if you look at Beachboard it looks complicated too."

Currently, Blackboard has an operating cost of approximately $300,000 to $400,000 a year. Moodle, which has no licensing fee, would be approximately $100,000 less a year to operate than Blackboard. Although, it is an open source product there are still operating costs involved to maintain it. "Free as in puppy, not as in beer," Gardner said. "That's what's often said about free software. You still have to feed it and nourish it."

Angel would cost approximately $25,000 less a year than Blackboard to operate. Though operating costs as a whole are less for Angel and Moodle than for Blackboard, the university would still allocate the same amount of funding towards Blackboard's replacement. The funds would simply be applied towards additional product support rather than product cost.

"We have very little support right now in that area," Gardner said. "We have two people supporting the LMS and that's not enough, most people [universities] have four or five."

Gardner stressed the importance of having adequate personnel necessary to support a busy network. "We know that approximately half of faculty use Beachboard in some manner and that number is going up each year," Garnder said. "Eighty-five percent of students use Beachboard for at least one class."

According to Gardner, response from faculty and staff has been "overwhelmingly positive, there have been so many problems with it [Blackboard] that most people are ready for a change."

Currently, there is no fixed deadline to make a decision regarding the new platform, but according to Gardner the process seems to be in its final stages. "We're getting very close to wrapping this up," Gardner said. "We're getting to the point where now we can present the results to the Provost."

A small steering committee will meet with the Provost sometime next week [Nov. 10-14] to share the information gathered from the product evaluations. The final decision will be up to the Provost. If she makes a decision within the next several weeks and resources allow, there is hope to have a replacement platform for the fall 2009 semester with the final conversion to the new system occurring during the 2009-2010 academic year.