Blackboard Inc has had several legal issues, including faulty patent rights claims.[6] In addition, a number of educational institutions,[7][8][9] teachers,[10][11][12][13] and students[14][15][16][17][18] have expressed concerns about the reliability of Blackboard. McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, has replaced their Blackboard system after multiple problems during one year of use.[19] Citing numerous glitches and high costs, many universities are turning to the cheaper, open source alternative Moodle, including Montana State University,[20] Vassar College,[21] California State University, Long Beach,[22] and many other schools.[23] Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's implementation of the system notably suffered sporadic outages in the Grade Book section during the finals of the Fall 2014 semester.[24]
Stephanie J. Coopman has published an in-depth analysis of the pros and cons of the Blackboard system. She finds the "hierarchical" power structure implicit to the system to be troubling.[25] The system has also been criticized for having poor Linux compatibility and support.[26]
The Learn 9.1 version is based on a system of Building Blocks (B2s), many of which depend on other B2s. System administrators have complained about the complexity of these dependencies, which were poorly documented in the initial releases.[27] Sysads would update one B2, not realizing that updates to other B2s had to happen first. This sometimes caused major system instability and feature failures, resulting in significant unplanned downtime.