Over the past ten years the number of commercial LMS’s have declined from several dozen to just a few. Blackboard, Inc., the largest of these commercial providers, has acquired a number of rival systems, including WebCT and Angel, and has alleged patent infringement against another competitor, Desire2Learn.
This has caused concern in higher education that the commercial LMS marketplace may become monopolistic. Moreover, proprietary systems like Blackboard do not allow users to modify or access the database, making it difficult to produce targeted usage reporting, integrate the system with other campus technologies or to customize the system for a particular campus environment.
Considering a Commercial LMS
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Stability - more seasoned products tend to offer dependability | Lack of Customization |
| Scalable - can manage many users | Upgrade schedule - vendor driven |
| Support Available | Tool-centric design |
| Documentation | Proprietary Content - a BlackBoard course may not carry over to another LMS neatly |
| Perception of Safety | Cost |
| Turn Key Solution |
The table above highlights some of the pros and cons of using a commercial product such as BlackBoard.
With a commercial product, you negotiate a price with the vendor, usually based on student enrollment numbers. In exchange, you receive access to software and updates. Institutions can also elect to let the vendor host the site, so the school is relieved from the headaches of setting up servers and access.
The downsides to going with a commercial vendor are that schools
cannot customize sites, add tools or deactivate certain features. More
schools are discovering that breaking up is hard to do, if you
decide to change vendors. Once a course is set up in a commercial
product such as BlackBoard, they do make it easy to export the course
into a format that is usable by other systems. A course created in
BlackBoard is meant to stay in BlackBoard, and they are not invested in
insuring the course could be neatly imported into a competitor such as
Moodle, Sakai or Desire2Learn.
