Blackboard's usability is good, with a clean and simple interface:

• all functions are grouped under various sections that have the same names in all courses, e.g. "Course documents", "Communication", "Tools".
• font scaling works well (except with older versions of Netscape)
• course menu is always visible; course map can be displayed in a separate popup window, to provide quick access to all course components.
• "Back" button does work.

However, there are some limitations (partly due to the frame-based display): individual pages in a course cannot be bookmarked, and correct printing depends on the browser's handling of frames.

Some limitations:

• The student can only create one note for a whole course. The note cannot be saved (must use copy-paste).
• Separate functions must be used to search content and forums. Other course components (e.g. assignments) cannot be searched.
• No context-sensitive help.

Blackboard provides no internal email inside courses, but at the portal/community level, it can be interfaced to an institution's email system.

Also, tracking statistics for individual content elements are not available from the main statistics page. Instructor has to go to the content pages to view them.

Blackboard provides a web interface for organizing the course structure, and uploading content. Various possibilities are provided for adding course material:

1. Single documents can be added to the course structure, and displayed either inline within a page or as a link. Folders can also be created and may contain other elements (incl. folders). This allows for hierarchical structuring of content.
2. Zip archives containing different files can be uploaded and uncompressed. Directory structure is maintained, and relative links within documents in the archive work. Actually, if a course document needs to use external files (such as a style sheet or a data file in a Flash animation), zip archives are the only solution.
3. "Learning units" can also be created, to enforce sequential viewing of content.
4. SCORM packages can be imported. Results from the package can be stored in the gradebook (SCORM packages are handled with a Building block called the "SCORM Viewer").
5. Other types of contents may be added, depending on the installed building blocks.

All course elements can have additional text that will appear before the element in the course structure.

Various metadata (ownership, resource format, copyright information, etc.) can be added to course elements.

Downsides of content creation in Blackboard:

• Creating even a moderately complex hiearchical structure with option 1 above is a tedious task, and authors will probably resort to option 2, i.e. use a zip archive. However, this solution requires that authors provide their own navigation within documents.
• Blackboard provides no concept of a "file manager": once uploaded, documents cannot be accessed directly, or reused in another place in the course. And changing a document requires re-uploading it. Thus, updating individual files uploaded with options 1 or 2 is cumbersome: e.g. if a single file in a zip archive has to be updated, the whole archive must be uploaded again.
• Finally, there is no integrated text editor or web-based form that could be used to make small changes to HTML documents.

No html editor as such available?

Upload

Once an extension has been developed, it can be redistributed (freely or commercially) via the online Blackboard Building Blocks catalog. Some of the extensions available in the catalog include a SCORM player, a "who's online" module, and bridges to quiz systems from Respondus and Perception.

Building Blocks are very powerful, but require a good deal of very technical programming. Thus, a skilled programmer is needed, and there is some overhead, even to create a simple extension.

There is a "Behind Blackboard" web site at Blackboard, which provides free access to various kinds of materials: documentation, knowledge base, forums, etc.

The Blackboard Developers Network provides developers of Blackboard extensions with a selection of information and services (subscription of 1200$ per year required). Blackboard also recommends that developer licenses be purchased to develop and test Building blocks applications on a "non-production" Blackboard server ($2500 per year).

Content must be uploaded as a zip archive if it consists of html pages with images, Flash animations, external style sheets, etc.

The upcoming release 6 of Blackboard will support WebDAV.

Questions can be stored in "pools", which are course specific, but pools can be exported as a file and imported within another course.

An extension allowing integration with the professional quiz system QuestionMark from Perception can be bought, as well a one from Respondus for offline editing of quizzes.

Assessments can also placed at any location within the course content, which is a nice feature. But the process to accomplish this is a bit cumbersome: it isn't done with the course structure editor, as one would expect it. Instead, it must be done when setting the quiz availability in the assessment manager.

With regard to IMS standards, Blackboard is compliant in the following :

• Content Packaging 1.12
• Enterprise 1.01
• QTI 1.2 (release 6, import and export functionality is not exposed)
• Metadata 1.2.1 (release 6)

Virtual installations allow several institutions to share a single Blackboard server, creating several distinct and customizable Blackboard environments (this feature is currently only available in Blackboard 6, and is simulated in Blackboard ML via the separate language library profiles).

At the course level, only the button shape and colors and a banner for the home page can be changed.

Style sheets can be used in content files uploaded as a zip archive.

• Three tier architecture: database, web server + Blackboard application
• Application consists of Perl scrips and Java servlets
• Load balancing is supported