Blackboard, the system St. Thomas students and staff have been using since 2002, began rolling out new changes and improvements this summer to combat user complaints.

Blackboard CEO Jay Bhatt unveiled plans for improvements, some of which are still in the works, during the Blackboard World 2014 conference in July. Among the changes are a complete interface overhaul, updates to the mobile app, movement of the system to the cloud and merging of Blackboard products.

Bhatt said the reason for the updates is to focus on the learner and make the system more user-friendly.

Junior Zac McEachran pointed out some negatives of the current Blackboard.

“I grade for a class, and the interface for inputting grades isn’t the most user-friendly,” McEachran said. “It’s sometimes hard to find things if you want to check your grades or whatever.”

McEachran said a lot of his professors, especially his physics professors, opt out of using Blackboard at all.

“They usually have their own website on the side and … I like that because they kind of have it set up very easily, where you don’t have to click on links to go a certain channel,” McEachran said.

The largest change will be the fully revamped interface, which is advertised to have an iOS feel that is sleeker and simpler to use. This update will also allow the site to maintain ease of use and accessibility to all functions no matter how the screen size changes.

Junior Maddie Johnson said she is excited about this feature.

“(Right now) I like it on my computer, but I don’t like it on my phone,” Johnson said.

According to Lynn Murdoch, Information Resources and Technologies Blackboard application administrator, St. Thomas originally considered Prometheus and WebCT as alternative options to Blackboard. Murdoch said the university is happy with its selection.

“We did another formal review (of Blackboard) a few years back,” Murdoch said. “We regularly bring vendors in to demonstrate new learning management systems, but at this point, we have not seen one that is far superior to what we have with Blackboard.”

Murdoch said Blackboard is reliable and rarely experiences outages. She said the “down for maintenance” notices are for routine patches or system upgrades.

“The ‘down for maintenance’ on the homepage is a reference to standard system maintenance, not indicative of an outage or a problem,” Murdoch said. “The Twitter feed on the IRT site is what indicates outages and there aren’t many.”

Senior Alison Waid said Blackboard is superior to Desire2Learn, a popular Blackboard competitor that she uses for ACTC classes at St. Kate’s. Waid said D2L has an outdated feel and that the layout is confusing.

“I like Blackboard more than I like D2L,” Waid said.

Murdoch doesn’t yet know if the new design will help St. Thomas students and staff.

“Design is iterative, and there’s never a final product or perfect result,” Murdoch said.

Jamie Bernard can be reached at bern2479@stthomas.edu.