Coursekit, a free “learning management system” (LMS) website that hopes to carve out some of Blackboard’s market at Binghamton University, launched Tuesday.
The company completed its beta stage this week in order to give course instructors time to prepare their courses for next semester using the site, according to a statement from Coursekit CEO Joseph Cohen in a press release.
The Coursekit website is divided into five main sections: Stream, Calender, Resources, Syllabus and Profiles. All are accessible by tabs at the top of the page.
Andrew Williamson, a junior double-majoring in music and accounting and a “campus founder” of Coursekit, helped to promote the site on campus with presentations, tutorials and flyers.
Flyers containing the Coursekit logo and phrases like “Blackboard ate my homework,” “Sick of Blackboard?,” “Who sits in front of me?” and “Who should I study with?” appeared in many locations around campus Tuesday.
Cohen stated in a report published in Forbes Magazine in May that the site’s social additions make it unique.
“It’s a new product that turns each class into a lively community online,” Cohen said. “For that reason I don’t even like calling ourselves an LMS because we’re really a different product.”
Williamson said that “Stream,” a discussion board modeled after Facebook in which students can post questions, share files and comment, is one such social function on the site.
“It’s easy to use, because everyone’s pretty much used to this kind of setup,” Williamson said. “The course starts looking like a human experience instead of one that happened twice a week or for an hour.”
Michelle Sausner, a senior majoring in biology, noted that Blackboard already has a discussion board, but he said that very few of his professors use it.
“That’s really similar to the Blackboard discussion board,” Sausner said. “Some teachers would if you posted on the discussion board give bonus points, but not a lot of teachers use it.”
Williamson said resources and syllabi can be accessed more easily on Coursekit than on Blackboard.
Evan Christopher, a junior majoring in physics, said he finds Blackboard’s website difficult to use.
“Everything’s right there but at the same time, navigating’s kind of difficult sometimes,” Christopher said.
Cohen said he hopes that Coursekit will replace Blackboard over time because of the easy setup for professors and free price, as opposed to Blackboard, which charges for its services.
“Over time we hope to replace it,” Cohen said. “We’re confident especially since it’s free, and it takes three minutes to set up.”
Cohen said he was confident Coursekit would prove successful.
“The plan is basically to build this large user-base, and then allow publishers to distribute through our platform,” Cohen said. “We don’t think of charging for our software. It’s more like Gmail, Facebook or Twitter in that respect.”
Cohen and Williamson said one of Coursekit’s advantages was its technical support system and speedy response time to any bugs that appear.
“We have a support system that is always running, they have a ton of dedicated people,” Williamson said.
Mark Reed, associate vice president of Information Technology Services at BU, said Blackboard has been “very responsive” when problems occur.
“We are able to reach their support team quickly and get quick feedback,” Reed stated in an email. “[When Blackboard experienced intermittent functional difficulties in October], they had trouble identifying the problem, and it took a lot of analysis of logs, etc. by both [Blackboard and BU] to figure out what was wrong. In both of those cases they were quite responsive, but were not able to be helpful very quickly.”
Reed said that for the University to switch from using Blackboard to any other service would not be a trivial decision. He said about 80 percent of BU classes use Blackboard, and that many faculty and staff would have to undergo training for new software.
“If we replace Blackboard, the main disadvantage would be the huge project and resources necessary to choose, acquire, install, test and convert to the new project,” Reed stated. “In general, my opinion is that these packages will all leapfrog back and forth and all provide similar function over the long run, so it’s not worth trying to change unless there are compelling reasons to do so. That being said though, ITS is there to support the University. If the University decides this is a project worth doing, we would be in there trying to make it work.”
He declined to comment on how much BU pays for Blackboard’s services. He said that the University’s contract with the company prohibited such disclosure.