Anton Zolotov is a student at the George Washington University studying International Business and Finance. He recently wrote a piece called "Why Basecamp and Campfire would be a Better Learning Management System."
I use Basecamp from 37signals to manage all of my work-related projects, as well as some group projects for college, and I grew to love all of their products in one way or another. At our university, we use Blackboard as a Learning Management System, and I can’t say that it’s good at all. In this post, I outline the most important shortcomings of Blackboard, the benefits of Basecamp and Campfire, and why the latter would be a better fit for our classes...The thing is that [37signals] products are not designed for education, they are designed for business. Yet, Basecamp and Campfire would be a much better overall fit than the Blackboard we currently use.
First of all, their software is priced on subscription model, which means that you don’t have to worry about version numbers, upgrading, and having the most up-to-date version, because they continually integrate new features and make improvements.
Out of the five Blackboard features that we use most – File Sharing, Gradebook, Announcements, Projects, and Emailing – Basecamp is way better for three of them: file sharing, announcements, and emailing (messages). In addition to that, it has to-do lists and milestones, which could facilitate the organization of the course. You can find a tour of Basecamp here. It also integrates with Campfire, a real-time chat that could be used to improve in-class communication and collaboration.
