Last week the first and likely last Blackboard-compatible Facebook application launched. Named “Course Feed,: the app was created by Class Top, a Blackboard Building Block Partner. This is the description:
“CourseFeed connects you with your classmates and connects you to Blackboard®. Browse your courses, post messages to the class, share notes – all without ever leaving Facebook. CourseFeed also alerts you when your professor posts announcements, tests, or content to Blackboard. And you’ll get alerts when classmates post to the course wall and share notes.”
Aside form the fact that students do not use Facebook for anything even remotely related to academics, the major issue with the launch was an onslaught of schools demanding that their institutions be removed from the integration because,
“We don’t want any connection between [our school] and Facebook.”
Since the application relies on the ability for students to login into their school BB accounts (to synch their feeds) in order to port the information to Facebook, the chances of this application’s success is, well, limited. Developer s should note that not even Facebook itself still entertains hopes of a successful academic adoption.