Don't get rid of Blackboard!
Okay, I know what you're thinking. "Blackboard sucks. It's always down. It's buggy. I hate it. Why should we keep it?" But hear me out.
As annoying as it can be at times, Blackboard is free and easy to use. Switching to another system would mean that students and faculty would have to learn yet another online platform (on top of Sapling, Mastering, LON-CAPA, and a myriad of others). And that system is going to have its own issues. It's not like server crashes are unique to Blackboard. CCIT would also have to get used to maintaining and dealing with the new system and its potential problems, while they already understand Blackboard.
I'm not saying Blackboard is perfect, but I don't feel that switching to another online platform would make the problems we have with Blackboard go away. They may even become worse with the new system. Out of all of our online systems, Blackboard is least awful, and I don't see why the school has decided to do away with it. We may love it. We may hate it. But I don't see a reason to get rid of it. Let's keep Blackboard.
As you probably saw in an email earlier this week, the school is officially moving to Canvas software. This change was decided by a committee that included students and various other perspectives on campus. The schools contract with Blackboard is up at the end of the year and the alternative decided was canvas.
The system has an app and connects to more services than blackboard, such as google drive and others. Overall change is hard but the software seems to be better than blackboard.
-USG
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Cohen Turner commented
I have friends whose campuses have switched to Canvas (which is what they are switching to) and they LOVE it much more than Blackboard, its a lot easier to use and gives you a lot more information. You might look into it. We are students who should be great at learning programs and Canvas isn't difficult. I would look into it before you get too strong of an opinion against it.