Yesterday morning Barnes & Noble Education, the owner of 743 college bookstores and related services, announced the acquisition of LMS provider LoudCloud Systems for $17.9 million in cash. LoudCloud provides a traditional LMS for general higher education and K-12 needs, and they are best known for their customer Grand Canyon University, a for-profit provider and partial […]
A Big Reason That Digital Textbooks Are Misunderstood
Chegg, which is in the midst of a dramatic change in their business model by moving from textbook rentals to digital student services, got slammed last week in the stock market. After reporting mixed results of better-than-expected earnings yet worse-than-expected revenues, their stock price lost 35% in one day (Feb 22). But this is not […]
Data On Average Age Of Current LMS Implementation
This week Jim Julius asked on Twitter if anyone had data on average length of time US higher ed institutions have had their current LMS. @PhilOnEdTech Do you know of any stats on avg length of time US colleges/unis have been using their current primary LMS? — Jim Julius (@jjulius) February 23, 2016 That’s an […]
UNC Learning Technology Commons: Easing the procurement problem with NGDLE
I was planning to write a descriptive post about the new UNC Learning Technology Commons, but there is already some excellent coverage. UNC’s Matthew Rascoff wrote a blog post on Medium that captures the basics quite well: A compelling recent report from EDUCAUSE proposes that the “Next Generation Digital Learning Environment” will be based on a “‘Lego’ approach,” […]
After Customer Feedback And Further Delays, Blackboard Changes Learn Ultra Strategy For LMS
A full seven months after BbWorld 2015, Blackboard has yet to move any new functionality for Learn Ultra from “in development” or “in research” to “available” according a new public webinar. That is, Learn Ultra is no further along from a customer delivery perspective than they were in July 2015, when they were already a […]
Making Lab Sections Interactive: More evidence on potential of course redesign
Two weeks ago Michael and I posted an third article on EdSurge that described an encouraging course redesign for STEM gateway courses. In our e-Literate TV series on personalized learning, we heard several first-hand stories about the power of simple and timely feedback. As described in the New York Times, administrators at the University of California, […]
College Scorecard: ED quietly adds in 700 missing colleges
It’s worth giving credit where credit is due, and the US Department of Education (ED) has fixed a problem that Russ Poulin and I pointed out where they had previously left ~700 colleges out of the College Scorecard. When the College Scorecard was announced, Russ noticed a handful of missing schools. When I did the […]