Hello, everyone. My name is Matt Brent, and I have in the past complained about Blackboard as a learning management system. Now that I'm taking courses that use Sakai, I want to go back on that and state how much I appreciate Blackboard. It's all relative, I suppose! :biggrin: -Matt
OK! I'll talk! In third grade, I cheated on my history exam. In fourth grade, I stole my uncle Max's toupee and I glued it on my face when I was Moses in my Hebrew School play. In fifth grade, I knocked my sister Edie down the stairs and I blamed it on the dog... When my mom sent me to the summer camp for fat kids and then they served lunch I got nuts and I pigged out and they kicked me out... But the worst thing I ever done - I mixed a pot of fake puke at home and then I went to this movie theater, hid the puke in my jacket, climbed up to the balcony and then, t-t-then, I made a noise like this: hua-hua-hua-huaaaaaaa - and then I dumped it over the side, all over the people in the audience. And then, this was horrible, all the people started getting sick and throwing up all over each other. I never felt so bad in my entire life.
I have taught in many platforms and only Sakai makes me want to cry every term when I need to set my courses up.
Makes me wonder if Sakai was not named properly. I wonder if it should have been called Suckey? People that use it then could be called suckers. Just a thought.
The one I've used that I disliked the least was eCollege, but that was ten years ago and I don't know whether Pearson changed it a lot after they bought it. Its good feature was expandable/collapsible discussion posts, which made it a lot easier to navigate discussion than on most systems. More recently, I've liked the look of Canvas LMS, although I haven't used it extensively.
Sakai has its quirks, but I thought the same thing about Blackboard Learn when I first started using it to teach. I suppose I'll grow used to Sakai. -Matt
My university uses Blackboard for "regular classes," while for out "Virtual Campus" we use a proprietary system through Capital Education. The rumor mill is flying that we are going to quit using Blackboard because of expense...
It is not bad from the student end of the platform. From a course set-up aspect is can be very frustrating because of all of the settings and different areas that can conflict. APUS just started auto-importing a Master class shell for each class, so if the class is not one of my assigned "Lead Courses" it takes me a day or two just to figure out what the builder of the course did with regard to settings.
