Course management software is transforming higher education

NEW YORK -- The students in Howard Budin's democracy and technology class hold spirited discussions and go on course-related field trips.

But physical interaction with classmates is strictly optional.

The Columbia University professor manages the distance-learning class with course management software. He finds the software doesn't just ease his workload by reducing mundane tasks. It can also help ease inhibitions.

"They participate a whole lot more than they do in my face-to-face course," Budin said of his students who interact electronically.

The program Budin uses is from Blackboard Inc., a leader in the burgeoning field of electronic education, where technology is increasingly being used to enhance the classroom experience and streamline academic logistics.

Perhaps most revolutionary about such programs is how they boost idea exchange with constantly evolving online dialogues.

That creates a dynamic not always possible in a regular course, said Dr. Robert Steiner, associate director for Leadership Programs and Distance Learning at Columbia's Teachers College.

"You don't have the dominance of the one loudest kid in class," he said.

And students may not need to take so many notes in class as these products let professors post such material online, accessible to students via password entry.

Cutting the paperwork

Depending upon how a college or university chooses to deploy them, course management programs can cut paperwork in everything from a course registration to in-class assignments, testing and grading.

"Technology is really becoming a core component of universities and colleges' missions" -- driving a big shift in how they operate, said analyst Sean Gallagher of Eduventures Inc., a Boston-based research firm.

The e-education market, which emerged in the late 1990s, was worth $4.5 billion last year and could more than double by 2005, Eduventures says.

So far, only 21 percent of the roughly 4,000 U.S. colleges and universities use course management systems, the primary services of Blackboard and its main competitor WebCT Inc.

Blackboard boasts 2,400 client institutions and WebCT claims 2,500, though Gallagher says those numbers can be deceptive because many schools use products from both companies.

With more than 400 employees, Blackboard launched in 1997 with a handful of Cornell University undergraduates who had created course management programs for their professors to earn extra cash.

The company's chairman, Matthew Pittinsky, and chief executive, Michael Chasen, left jobs as 20-somethings at KPMG Consulting Inc. and purchased the Cornell students' service.

Now based in Washington, D.C., Blackboard is raking in the largest revenue in the industry at $65-70 million for 2001, Pittinsky said.

Early on in the company's life, he recalled, investors had their doubts about Blackboard's young management team and potential. One investor admitted to Pittinsky in 1998 that he had persuaded a partner not to invest in Blackboard the previous year but, seeing that the company had just secured $200,000 in financing, was ready to reopen discussion.

In fact, the investors topped that amount, raising $3.1 million.

While Blackboard now appears to have overcome doubters, its greatest challenge may come from colleges opting to create their own systems.

Building their own

Considering commercial offerings inadequate to their school's unique needs, techies at Bowdoin College put together their own package beginning in 1998, said Peter Schilling, director of the school's Educational Technology Center.

"Things like Blackboard and WebCT are sort of the AOL in education," Schilling said. "They're really the lowest common denominator approach."

Although Case Western Reserve University uses Blackboard, the school's vice president of information technology, Lev Gonick, calls it a "first-generation product."

Another homegrown alternative is The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's ambitious Open Knowledge Initiative. It seeks the best ways to use computers as education resources for a generation that came of age with thinking machines.

Course management software is not universally embraced in academia, however.

Some professors have resisted posting their ideas online, considering them intellectual property that makes them unique and marketable.

"You want to make sure that training companies are not going to use it and make a profit on it," said Marsha Sanders, an MIT communications facilitator.

And others don't believe it suits their classroom needs much.

Thomas Sobol, an education professor at Teacher's College, does not use Blackboard for his distance-learning class on ethical issues in educational leadership.

"So much of the experience of the course comes from the experience of the students themselves that I couldn't really bottle it up ahead of time and put it up on the Net," said Sobol, a former New York state commissioner of education.

Sobol does, however, make accommodations. His class Web page lists the syllabus and lets students post messages.