e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Category: LMS & Learning Platforms

Everything you want to know about Learning Management Systems and whatever comes after them.

  • Blackboard and Moodle Now BFFs

    As we have been writing about here for some time, there has been an open question about the future of Blackboard’s partnership with Moodle. Through its acquisitions, Blackboard has become the world’s largest Moodle support company. This means that they also contribute a hefty percentage of the annual operating budget for Moodle Pty. Both sides have good reason to get along—Blackboard because Moodle has been key to their growth in international markets and Moodle because Blackboard contributes such a substantial portion of the money that keeps Moodle running every year. But there have been challenges in aligning the specific needs of both sides to make the relationship work. In my post about Blackboard’s new CEO, Bill Ballhaus, I wrote the following as one of the things the new leader will have to accomplish:

    • Resolve the tensions with Moodle HQ (one way or another): As Phil and I have written about before, Moodle is critical to Blackboard’s international growth, but there are growing signs of tension between Blackboard and Moodle HQ, the company that shepherds Moodle’s open source development. While this item is less of a “must do” than it is a “probably gonna happen,” I think it likely that Blackboard will either mend fences or go its separate ways in the next six months. Unresolved tensions are not good for either organization.

    Well, it looks like fences have been mended. Blackboard and Moodle Pty. have announced a renewal of the partnership. Based on both from the press release and comments made by both sides, Phil and I believe that both sides made and received concessions to restructure the relationship, and that both sides seemed to be happy about the result.

    If you’re a fan of Moodle, or just of diversity in the LMS market (including open source options), then you should be happy about this resolution. At the same time, it enables Blackboard to keep driving its successful international growth strategy, of which Moodle is an essential part.

  • Wheaton College Selects Schoology As New LMS In Surprise Decision

    Schoology, a social cloud-based LMS known mostly used in the K-12 market, has set its sights on expanding into the higher education market using their recent $32 million funding round. Last January, Colorado State University’s Global Campus selected Schoology to replace Blackboard Learn, yet the market impact of this decision was limited, partially due to the non-traditional nature of the online-only campus. What Schoology has needed to gain more market credibility and awareness is a second set of higher ed institutions selecting Schoology in an open competition. Enter Wheaton College in Illinois, which recently selected Schoology as its new LMS. This is the most significant new selection that I have seen.

    I interviewed CIO Wendy Woodward from Wheaton to find out more on the nature of this decision. For context, Woodward became Wheaton’s CIO in January 2015, moving from her previous job at Northwestern University. Based on her listening tour to understand campus needs, the decision to replace the LMS was listed near the top of the list. Given Northwestern’s recent move to Canvas, Woodward related that there was a common assumption that Wheaton would do the same. The faculty committee fully went through the evaluation process, however, and ended up selecting Schoology after inviting responses from 10 different solutions. The campus has already begun pilots and plans to be fully migrated to the new system by Fall 2016. (more…)

  • Barnes & Noble Education Buys LMS Provider LoudCloud Systems For $17.9 Million

    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 investor. LoudCloud from the beginning touted a modular approach to learning management systems, and one of their key modules is LoudBooks, an “adaptive and social” eReader of digital course materials. More recently, LoudCloud entered the competency-based education (CBE) market by releasing FASTRAK, an LMS specifically designed for CBE programs.

    According to LISTedTECH data, LoudCloud is used in a half dozen colleges and university accounts in the US, although these are mostly for-profits with multiple campuses.

    I have long heard discussions that LoudCloud was looking for an exit, so the acquisition of the company is not a surprise, per se. But why Barnes & Noble Education? I think that timing of the announcement helps answer that question.

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  • Dammit, the LMS: The Play at Home Game

    A while back, I wrote a rant about why LMSs fail to evolve. It got some…notoriety. Since Phil and I are now writing a bi-weekly column for the Chronicle‘s new Re:Learning section, I thought I’d try trimming down the piece and rewriting it for a general audience. It was an interesting exercise. On e-Literate, we have the luxury of writing pieces that are as long as we want them to be and of assuming that our audience is pretty knowledgeable about a wide range of tech issues. We can also choose to target different subgroups of our audience with each post. Honestly, there have been times when I’ve written a post that was primarily intended to persuade one (influential) person, although I always try to make my posts interesting to a broader range of people. When we write for the Chronicle, we are always writing for a broad audience of non-techies, and we have to keep our ideas small and focused enough that we can adequately express them in 1500 words or less. But to the degree that we succeed, we have an opportunity to be ambassadors for ed tech issues to broader academia.

    Since many of you play that role of ambassador every day, I’d be grateful for your feedback. If you have a moment, please go read the article at the Chronicle and then come back here and comment on it. Did I pick the right aspects of the issue to focus on? Do you think this piece would resonate with your campus stakeholders? Would it be helpful to you in your conversations at work?

  • 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.

    That’s an interesting question, as it should give insight into whether schools are unusual in how long or short they’ve been using one solution. It should also give some insight into the market itself.

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  • Blackboard Ultra Update: Some Clarity

    Blackboard’s VP of Teaching and Learning, Valerie Schreiner, was kind enough to give Phil and me a fairly thorough update on the Ultra strategy on Wednesday. Their strategy is clearer to me now. That strategy, which I am about to share with you, is fairly coherent, reasonably interesting, and practically plausible in principle. There are still big execution questions that won’t be answered until we see what is released at BbWorld and talk to some customers. (More on this later.) But at least we have a better sense of what they are trying to do now.

    We don’t usually spend this much sustained time focusing on one company and product, but since we are getting a lot of feedback from readers that it is helpful and timely for them, and since Blackboard has been extremely responsive in providing us with clarifications, we’re going to stay on this one until we feel that it’s been adequately covered.

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  • Dear Blackboard, I am Confused

    The good news is that Blackboard, after going quiet for a while, is out giving updates again. The bad news is that the more they talk, the less I understand. A year and a half ago, I thought that I understood their Ultra strategy and had a pretty good guess about their odds of executing it. Last summer, I felt much less sure about the execution but still reasonably comfortable that I understood the basic strategy. Now, after Phil’s update on their strategy, I am forced to admit that I understand what is happening in Blackboard right now about as well as I understand what is happening in the Republican Presidential primary. I’m generally pretty good at following this stuff, and even I have lost the thread. The messaging has gotten so garbled that I have lost confidence in my understanding of the company’s product vision and strategy.

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