I was interested to read Patrick Klaassen's posting on his weblog. He is lucky enough to be in San Diego to visit the Blackboard users conference...

I was especially pleased to hear that Blackboard is starting to change it's thinking and philosophy and is starting to direct there product less at a traditional learning.
They are building tools to support life long learning, like portfolio's for life. They appear to be adding the merits of social software. As you don't want to spend your life hidden in your Bb, there are rss feeds to keep you in touch with the latest news for your course.

They are also integrating tools from outside Blackboard. I am especially interested in the evaluation tool there are building as a building block. This seems to allow the comparison of surveys over various courses. This is a desire that has been around for a few years know. Also the Tegrity building block may be an out of the box solution for taping lectures and offering them in Blackboard. And not surprisingly: an integration with Sharepoint. Now who was shareholder where? ;-)

For more details I do advise you to read Patrick Klaassen's weblog.