By Kevin Carson, Center for a Stateless Society

Today (Oct. 28) Rachel McKinney, a friend who works as professor of philosophy, complained on Twitter that she was trying to create a midterm exam and “blackboard is complete fucking garbage. No intuitive way to break up questions into sections, can’t give instructions for specific sections, can’t modulate to require answers for e.g. 10 of 15 questions that students can choose.” Just as I suspected, she explained when asked that the choice of software was involuntary:  “the three big ones are Blackboard, Canvas, and Moodle — ‘learning management software.’ Institutions choose one and then all instructors have to use it. Blackboard is the oldest and clunkiest and by far the worst.”

This is exactly like the charting software we used at the hospital where I used to work. Software is produced by a stovepiped corporate development bureaucracy, for sale to another corporate bureaucracy, for mandatory use by a captive clientele of employees — all with zero user feedback at any point in the process.

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