e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Author: Phil Hill

  • LoudCloud Systems Announces Adaptive LMS General Release

    One of the trends that I’ve been tracking in the LMS market is a move away from the monolithic, all-things-to-everyone enterprise LMS solution. There are several different approaches challenging this model, but the general theme is that the ed tech market needs more flexible, targeted approaches to directly support teaching and learning needs.

    The news today is that LoudCloud Systems is officially announcing their LMS solution’s entry into the general higher education and K-12 markets as described in a Campus Technology article. In this announcement, LoudCloud promises what they describe as the “first fully adaptive and configurable Learning Management Systems for Higher Education and K12”. While I cannot judge yet how successful this vendor will be with their strategy, I think the announcement is significant for the LMS market for two reasons.

    • LoudCloud appears to be providing the first disaggregated LMS on the commercial market; and
    • The system has an integrated analytics engine that supports personalized content delivery.

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  • Farewell to the Enterprise LMS, Greetings to the Learning Platform

    Along with others, I have written several times over the past 12 months here, here, here and here about the significant changes occurring in the educational LMS market. In my opinion, when we look back on market changes, 2011 will stand out as the year when the LMS market passed the point of no return and changed forever. What we are now seeing are some real signs of what the future market will look like, and the actual definition of the market is changing. We are going from an enterprise LMS market to a learning platform market.

    What I mean by ‘enterprise LMS’ is the legacy model of the LMS as a smaller, academically-facing version of the ERP. This model was based on monolithic, full-featured software systems that could be hosted on-site or by a managed hosting provider. A ‘learning platform’, by contrast, does not contain all the features in itself and is based on cloud computing – multi-tenant, software as a service (SaaS).

    The 2011 EDUCAUSE event captured the zeitgeist of the changes, as it seemed most of the buzz at the conference centered on new LMS solutions and paradigm changes. Instructure made their debut at the conference, Pearson’s OpenClass was announced, Blackboard announced a new move in open content focused on CourseSites, and Cengage demonstrated their MindTap platform. Rather than slowing since EDUCAUSE, we have seen several additional announcements in the past three months.

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  • Four Initial Answers from Apple’s Education Announcement

    In a recent post I offered four key questions for the Apple Education Announcement held today (Jan 19th). Now that the event is over and the blogosphere is responding, I thought it would be useful to answer those four questions. Once I’ve had time to digest all the information coming out, I’ll post more of an analysis.

    1. Regarding textbook content, will the model follow iTunes, iBooks, or Amazon’s Kindle Self-Publishing?

    The answer to this question is that we have a new hybrid model that attempts to takes elements from all three models mentioned in the question, at least for the K-12 market that was the focus of initial efforts.

    • Like iTunes, it places an affordable maximum price of $14.99.
    • Like iBooks, it allows the content creator to set its price (although within the $0.00 to $14.99 range).
    • Like Amazon’s Kindle Self-Publishing, it democratizes textbook creation and distribution, providing an attractive path that could avoid traditional textbook publishers.

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  • The Tide is Turning – SOPA May Not Make It Out of Committee

    Over the past few days, there have been three significant developments that indicate the tide is turning on SOPA (and the Senate version, PIPA). As I have written previously, SOPA poses a threat to open education and educational technology in general, while most educational publishers are actively supporting this legislation. At the end of 2011, SOPA appeared to be likely to pass, with strong bipartisan support for the legislation. Since that time, there is a growing backlash, particular from technology companies as well as online communities such as Reddit. This backlash is having a real effect, and as of this weekend,  SOPA may not even make it out of the House Judiciary committee.

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  • Four Key Questions for the Apple Education Announcement

    There is growing buzz online about Apple’s planned media event on January 19th in New York City. Most speculation is focused on Apple distributing textbooks through iTunesU, as described in a New York Times blog. The basis for most speculation seems to be the short comments in the Walter Isaacson official biography of Steve Jobs. This information, along with some additional inside sources have led the NYT blogger Nick Wingfield to suggest that textbooks might be offered for free. In a post on Mashable, Kate Freeman suggests a partnership with publishers such as Pearson Education.

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  • Analysis of Instructure Security Testing

    Instructure has engaged Securus Global to test the Canvas LMS product for security vulnerabilities. Instructure also invited me to be an independent observer – participating in the process and independently reporting on the testing and Instructure’s response to any vulnerabilities identified. Part 1 of this series of posts described the concept. Part 2 gave a mid-term update, describing the process involved and initial results. Part 3 described the full results of the security assessment. In this final post on the experience I’d like to address two subjects – my own impressions of the testing, and a call for more LMS vendors to follow suit and make their security testing more transparent.

    Results Themselves

    As described in part 3, the risk assessment found 10 vulnerabilities – 1 critical, 1 high, 4 moderate and 4 low risk – in the Canvas LMS system. I do not have a basis to judge the relative number of vulnerabilities found compared to Instructure’s competitors, as there is not an industry-specific standard on the depth and extent of penetration testing, but by all appearances the Canvas LMS system is a well-designed, generally secure application. I base this judgment on two factors:

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  • Educational Publishers Appear to be Supporting SOPA

    UPDATE 12/23: Per the House Judiciary Committee, it is now confirmed that these companies are on the record supporting SOPA and the Protect IP companion legislation.

    Yesterday the House Judiciary Committee began the process of marking up the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill. From all appearances, most of the amendments have been rejected, thus leaving SOPA essentially in its original form. While passage is not assured, it is certainly a possibility as described by CNET.

    After a marathon debate on the Stop Online Piracy Act, it’s clear that the Hollywood-backed bill enjoys enthusiastic support among key members of the U.S. House of Representatives and is one step closer to becoming law.

    That became obvious after every legislative attempt to defang, rewrite, or significantly alter SOPA over nearly a 12-hour period today ended in victories for large copyright holders–and defeat upon defeat for the bill’s critics.

    While the SOPA impacts are not fully understood, there are some real dangers to educational usage that we need to follow. As described in my first post on the subject, SOPA could have a major impact on institutions using any form of educational technology to share content outside of a tightly-controlled password-protected course site. As we saw at EDUCAUSE this year, much of the potential of educational technology is to facilitate sharing of content outside of the traditional “walled gardens” of traditional LMS solutions, and enabling collaboration more broadly.

    This year’s EDUCAUSE keynote speaker, Seth Godin, has a post up at The Domino Project that calls out many of the list of “companies behind one of the lobbying groups pushing for SOPA”. On this list, lo and behold, we find most of the educational publishing companies.

    Pearson Education, Cengage Learning, McGraw-Hill Education, Macmillan, Scholastic, etc. They are all on the list.

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