Desire2Blog

I'm going to begin writing a somewhat sporadic series of posts related to lessons learned (and that sort of junk) from the past ten years of e-learning at Lake Superior College. Our first online class was delivered to eight Cell Biology students during the winter quarter of the 1997-98 academic year. That was the only online class offered that first year. In our tenth year of e-learning we taught 304 sections of online classes with a total of 7,850 student enrollments. Needless to say, some things have changed over the years. I remember when I was still a faculty member and e-learning was just beginning to take shape. There were many doom-and-gloom stories out there about how the sky was falling in higher ed because of this online learning thing. I clearly remember sitting in an auditorium at Normandale Community College listening to many people grouse about all the fears related to e-learning. Some of the most common (or maybe the most popular) fears went something like this: ...

I've been mostly out of touch and not in the blogging mood since the Desire2Learn User Conference ended in mid-July. I haven't really kept up very well on many of the maneuvers in the D2L-Blackboard-Turnitin craziness. In case you have also been somewhat asleep at the switch, here is a brief recap of recent events. Blackboard unveils plagiarism prevention service (July 10) Markman Decision Announced (Aug 4) that dismissed claims 1-35 of Blackboard's suit against Desire2Learn. Major victory for D2L. Turnitin and Blackboard engage in a catfight over more edupatents. (Aug 8) ( Also here ) Blackboard and Turnitin (iParadigms) decide to play nice - even though that is completely contrary to their natures. (Aug 23) Have my opinions changed about Blackboard (sucks) and Turnitin (sucks)? Nope.

I've been disconnected most of the past two weeks and am just now getting caught up on over 1,000 new posts in my Bloglines account. Of special interest to me is the battle between two of my least favorite companies from the higher ed arena of edupatents. I love it when Blackboard and Turnitin start taking shots at each other. I've still got a lot of reading to do before I'll really understand what is going on (if I do), but in the meantime just let me say that there aren't two sets of lawyers that I would rather see beating each other up than these two. More later as time permits.