Free Hosted Online Courses from Bb. Really?

Today marks the official release of a new program we call CourseSites.  Put simply, it’s a free version of our latest learning management system for individual instructors.  And I mean fully free – no software license, no hosting fee, and no charge for support.  And if our beta program is an indicator of interest in this new program, it’s gonna be a barn-burner.  We’ve already seen participation from thousands of individual instructors.

As I’ve shared news of this offering in recent months reaction has been very positive, and some have expressed surprise about our approach.  Why would we – a commercial provider – create such a compelling offer and make it free?  There are three reasons.

First, there are still important emerging markets for us where the standard enterprise adoption model is an obstacle for our business.  Good examples of this are the K12 and pockets within the international Higher Ed market.  Both are areas with significant growth potential for LMS product adoption.  And in both, individual faculty advocates often play a leading role in bringing this technology into their institutions.  The open source model has historically had fewer hurdles to sampling activity for these markets.  And naturally, the first products used often become the first products adopted.  So we’ve taken inspiration from the open source model where an LMS can be downloaded and installed with no barrier of purchase, and taken it to its logical extreme.  Just sign up online at www.coursesites.com, and with no installation, nor concern about support, you can begin production use of our latest and greatest product.

Now, there are very real costs to us to support this activity.  But if we execute well on the idea it will be an expedient and efficient investment in marketing our product.  Those with need will find us.  And we can be sure that their experience is highly professional – with no barriers of learning technology or systems administration to achieve a very good result for teaching.  So rather than just spending on advertising and marketing, we’re also spending on the experience of education.  For an organization like ours that’s confident in our ability to execute, this variation on the “freemium” model (though CourseSites itself is totally free) can be a more productive allocation of capital than some traditional marketing models.  This hews to our mission to improve access to education, reflect the values of educators we serve, while also creating an enduring business. 

Secondly, in the mature markets we face a challenge of competing with our own legacy versions.  While approximately 40% of our clients have adopted our NG release – the most rapid version uptake in our history – there are still 60% on older versions.  While we’ve invested heavily in supporting experimentation with our latest versions, we still face the basic hurdle that our clients need to install and learn how to administer our new product before it can be used successfully.  These barriers too often lead to a situation where clients undergoing re-evaluation are considering new open source products with a legacy Blackboard version as their frame of reference.  CourseSites changes this. Client institutions have this new option in their arsenal for change management.  It’s an allocation of investment around direct experience, and I’m confident our clients will appreciate the added flexibility it gives them in involving faculty and instructional designers in evaluating our latest software.

Third, this arrangement allows us to provide a series of additional products and features that may not be available to sample otherwise.  Beyond our latest LMS version we’ve included additional platform and partner technologies including Blackboard Collaborate instant messaging, live conferencing and voice tools, Respondus assessment and locked browser tools and content authoring from SoftChalk.  This mix gives users a chance to try out learning technologies we’re investing in as a company but to which they might not otherwise obtain access.  And there’s more to come.  We’ve also created new course templates and themes.  These course templates (called “structures”) help instructors more quickly develop courses that align with their preferred teaching method and pedagogic goals.  The course themes are fun, with a myriad of new ways to personalize the look and feel of the platform at the course level, with 50 new prebuilt themes. 

I’m optimistic about the impact CourseSites can have in reducing barriers to inspection for our existing clients and prospects in the emerging markets for learning technology.  So whether you’re a Blackboard client or not, I encourage you to have a look and share your thoughts with us.  And of course I’ll encourage you to share this news with others who are considering their LMS alternatives.  As always, your input is welcome—please feel free to reach out to me with questions at ray@blackboard.com.

Cheers,

Ray

p.s.   And if you’re interested, please do check out our man John Fontaine’s blog on the topic here:  www.johnfontaine.com.

 

Comments

[Charles Severance]

Ray - This is a brilliant idea and a very efficient way to address the very real issues that you mention. Nice work. I already made my first Bb course last week on CourseSites. I particularly am excited about the support for Basic LTI in CourseSites - it allows unprecedented flexibility for *individual instructors* to extend their learning environment by empowering instructors to easily plug tools into their CourseSite.

[Martha]

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I'm a middle school teacher, and I am working on setting up my two coursesites so that my students can become familiar with LMS early on. I would NEVER have been able to purchase Blackboard to use! Thank you so much!

[Anonymous Messaging]

Ray- this is truly great. I have a friend who is an elementary school teacher that is going to go nuts when I pass this on to her. I am wondering if her school district might invest in this for the long run?

[Patrick Laughran]

Ray, this is both visionary and a schrewd business strategy. And as an online instructor it's very exciting. As a CIO of a university it also raises some questions.

As "CourseSites" are adopted, even by segments of the market not mentioned, there are important considerations that include (but are not limited to): the university brand, ease-of-use across multiple courses, support implications, variety of facilitated interaction with people, integrated views of information from multiple sources, organized access to aggregated course materials – combined with the degree to which an individual is provided the ability to also rate, comment, share and create their own content "within" this environment...

As educators with responsibility for the stewardship of personally identifiable information and copyright material, we also need to be mindful of our obligation to manage information about a course (e.g. the syllabus and participants), information used in the course (e.g. copyright protected learning materials and licensed information resources) and information generated from the course itself (e.g. grades and online interactions).

Then of course there is the technological framework that provides the functional characteristics of the interactive network learning environment. Here we do need to consider the features and functionality of the software platforms provide, the degree to which they support interoperability standards (e.g. “LTI”), the ability to accommodate authentication to and from other applications, the roadmap for continued development, and the manner by which users can “mash-up”, “plug-in” and “add-on” both content and widgets from the “cloud”.

Lots to think about.

[Jarl Jonas]

Anonymous -
Thank you for the kind words and I’m glad you think CourseSites will be seen as a valuable resource. At present, to comply with federal mandates, our Terms of Use do require that users be 13 years of age or older. We have recently amended the policy and are considering other revisions to the design and some technical solutions that would allow parents and legal guardians to authorize use for users under the age of 13. That said, your friend and his/her colleagues are surely welcome to experiment with CourseSites to see how the technology could assist her with creating an online learning environment to make curriculum and resources available for students. Regarding use for the district, many school districts license Blackboard technology to help supplement classroom instruction with powerful teaching tools, and support professional development programs. Please let us know if this would be of interest and we can connect your friend with the account representative to schedule a further conversation and demonstration of our enterprise software. We look forward to seeing you online!