Another thing I'd want a (Faculty) Center for Teaching and Learning emphasize is the intelligent use of technology, both on-campus and in distance learning. Rounding up the usual suspects for a session or two at the Showcase on Learning is getting this university nowhere fast.
Blackboard is hardly a solution. More accurately it's another instance of the corporate approach to fixing a problem. Spend scads of money on an out-of-the box solution which 1) promises all things to all people, and 2) is so complicated that nobody knows how to make it work. Expect the peons to figure it out on their own, or not. What the hell. Like the cornfield ballpark in "Field of Dreams," management built it and they were supposed to come. Whether they came or they didn't is not management's problem. And if nobody is playing ball, it ain't management's fault.
Blackboard is serviceable for posting assignments and grades, and I have to admit that it runs a lot better now that the help desk has been upgraded. But Blackboard's alleged cutting-edge functionalities like discussion boards and podcasts are buried so deeply in the bloated interface that the students can't find them. When the students actually find the discussion boards and the podcasts, they are so user-unfriendly that the students don't want to use them. The idea of using Blackboard to administer quizzes and exams is interesting, but where am I going to find a room with 50 computer stations? Or am I supposed to trust the kiddies not to peek at their textbooks and lecture notes?
Don't even get me started about Blackboard's ballyhooed new wiki and blogging functionalities. since I have no doubt that they will suck far worse than what I already use. Blogger.com does the job just as well as any of the more ballyhooed information management systems, better than most, and is absolutely free. The great majority of free wiki products, on the other hand, are worth exactly what you pay for them. I would guess that the average MSU faculty member is familiar -however barely - with Wikipedia, but nobody seems to be making their students wikify things. An opportunity is being missed.
I am also appalled by the obvious distance between the faculty and the instructional technology staff at this university. The average MSU faculty member, I still suspect, barely comprehends that there is a whole world out there besides PowerPoint. The few faculty on this campus who could train their colleagues in newer instructional technologies (like the joys of wikification) are either too busy or too alienated to do it. The university will have to count on its staff as never before. It's crucial that these talented and dedicated people feel affirmed and honored for their contributions to the production of educated persons. If you build it, and convince them to come, it's still not worth a damn unless you get them to play ball there.
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I, too, hate Blackboard. I have not heard a single instructor who actually liked it, yet we are still using it.
Because of Dr. Cadle in the English Department, I was able to be a part of the beta testing of a Blackboard replacement that she is spearheading as the Interim Comp Director. It has blog and wiki-like capabilities and functions on the DrupalEd platform, so it works much better than Blackboard. It still did not offer every feature that I wanted for an online classroom supplement, but I prefer it far above Blackboard.
It does not have a way to post grades, and in that respect, Blackboard is the best I have seen. I resorted to using an Excel file with students' identities protected by a PIN number as a work-around to Blackboard because I despise all of its other "features."
Until universities have the money (!) to provide more computer classrooms (this IS the 21st century, the age of computers, after all), you are right: Using Blackboard to administer tests and quizzes is not a viable option.
Maybe all of these problems will be magically fixed when my generation, who have used computers since we were in our teens, takes our place in the halls of learning. Computers are more natural to us than they are to those who "barely comprehend that there is a whole world out there besides PowerPoint." By the Great Flying Fluffy in the Sky, I know there is hope.
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