Blackboard on Wednesday announced that it was purchasing Angel Learning for about $95 million, shaking up the course management industry.

While Blackboard is clearly dominant in the market, it has seen a number of colleges and universities shift to open source systems such as Sakai or Moodle, or to other companies. Angel has been particularly successful with community colleges and teaching-oriented institutions, and is known for outstanding customer service. In theory, the

acquisition could enable Blackboard to win over Angel clients and to improve its customer service while adding more teaching tools. And that’s the way leaders of the two companies described the deal in interviews on Wednesday.
Source: Inside Higher-Ed

In a time when hard work doesn’t necessarily result in success, a $95 million buy-out can sure make things nice.

Blackboard has provided “consistently poor customer service” both at Long Beach and at the previous institution where he was CIO, Weber State University. He said that the review process led him to think that Angel was “like day and night” compared to Blackboard on customer service. Blackboard wasn’t even the university’s second choice, Gardner said (Moodle was).

Told of Blackboard’s praise for Angel’s customer service record, Gardner said: “Their intentions may be sincere, but I have no faith in their ability as a company to become more like Angel.“

With that kind of customer service problem, it’s a wonder that Blackboard doesn’t spend more money on improving itself.

Moodle-ael

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