One of the more popular online learning (and training) management systems for high schools and universities in the United States is Blackboard. However, despite the fact that it has a lot to offer, many of it’s features are hidden deep in the interface.
We all came across it [ or at least most of us 😉 ]. You come to a new school or university and for sure, every single one of them uses a different learning platform like Moodle, OpenOLAT or Blackboard. These applications offer different ways for managing classes/courses, knowledge, vary greatly in features. They do have a few infamously commonalities, such as lacking simplicity, focus and consistency. However, in this particular post I would like to take a look at Grand Valley State Universities’s Blackboard (myBB) solution. As part of the CIS 623 class I am taking I received an assignment to design an improved version of it.
Why are online learning
platforms so frustrating?
In order to work on a new design I tried to locate a few of the major problem areas. There are several platform-external and -internal reasons why they might fail from my very personal opinion, such as: