Blackboard + open source = future?

The course management behemoth Blackboard has recently announced a partnership with the open-source course manager Sakai at Syracuse University. While the move is unlikely to inspire a great deal of confidence from the open source community—the partnership is at only one of thousands of Blackboard-using schools—it is a step in the right direction. Given the abundance of competent coders among students and faculty on most college campuses, it would make sense for universities to adopt open source course management software en masse. The implication for online schools is the same—each online program has its own specific needs in terms of how students are interacting or submitting course materials: students in a programming course require a different user experience than art students. (Click here for the full story over at Inside Higher Education)

Tags: Learning Technologies, Online Education