Blackboard Patent

It's amazing what the US Patent Office (and IP Australia) will patent these days.

Blackboard Inc., owners of the Blackboard and WebCT Learning Management Systems, has been issued a patent by the US patent office “for technology used for internet-based education support systems and methods. The patent covers core technology relating to certain systems and methods involved in offering online education, including course management systems and enterprise e-Learning systems.” [http://www.blackboard.com/company/press/release.aspx?id=887622]. A corresponding patent has been issued in Australia, among other places, and patents are pending in a number of other territories. MyClasses, Drupal, Moodle, and Sakai are examples of LMSs that the Division uses or has expressed an interest in using which may infringe Blackboard’s patent.

With the University currently in the process of reviewing its LMS options, it may be constrained in its choice of systems by the Blackboard patent. Blackboard has already filed a Patent Infringement Notice with one of its competitors, Desire2Learn, and may pursue its rights against other LMS developers both commercial and open source.

In the past patents like the Blackboard one issued by the US Patent Office have been overturned on appeal, especially where “prior art” exists. BlackBoard CEO, Michael Chasen, is himself quoted as saying “We [Blackboard] certainly did not invent e-learning or course management systems.” [http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?topic=8], so it is unlikely that the patent will stand. In the meantime, though, it may complicate the University’s procedures in updating its current WebCT LMS.

Divisional Web pages to the Content Management System

Progress on migrating Divisional Web pages to the University Content Management System.

ICT Services has advised that the comedu Divisional Web pages (not the Schools, but the Divisional pages) will be able to be included in the UC Web Content Management System in the near future.

Any comments of the existing pages are welcome to inform us of how the migration is handled: whether the existing pages are more or less moved to the new system or changes are made in the structure and content.

One item of concern is the Majors and Minors section of the existing site. It will be difficult to update and transfer that part of the site in its present form so it may have to be dropped. University approved majors and minors are published on the University website, but it appears at this stage they can’t be displayed by Division. Is this a suitable alternative?

Web Content Management System

The University now has a Web Content Management System (CMS) to help keep UC web content current.

PVC Research and Information Management launched the University's new Web Content Management System last Thursday in the Council Room. The first site to go live using the Web CMS is the CELTS site, available at http://www.canberra.edu.au/celts/.

PVC R&IM made some interesting remarks at the launch about the need for Universities to be online for prospective students to do some research on where they might like to go: if you are not online, you don't exist for these cyber-generation students. One member of the Division's staff had such an experience in China in January this year when her Chinese hosts could not find the School of Education and Community Studies on the University's website, even though it was on the staff member's newly-printed business cards.

The University's Web Content Management System was built with the open source software MySource Matrix developed in Australia by Squiz.net. The system will simplify and automate the way web publishing and management takes place at the University: allowing content owners to edit their web pages in a browser-like environment rather than having to learn Dreamweaver or another complicated web-page editing system, or having to rely on others with web-editing skills to make the changes for them.

The Division's "marketing" websites will be transitioned to the system over the next year or so, but the timetable and strategy are still be determined by UCOnline Manager and the ICT Services team (ICT Services will take over the responsibility of hosting sites using the Web Content Management System, and will help with training, coordination and supervision of the sites hosted there).

TSU Team are aware of the future transition to the Web CMS, and, while our role in any changeover is unclear at the moment, any work that has been done on websites recently has been done in the knowledge of the new system coming in, and sites have been designed to transition easily to the Web CMS once this is required by ICT Services.