As I was writing a post about Blackboard’s key challenges, I get notice from Reuters (anonymous sources, so interpret accordingly) that the company is on the market, seeking up to $3 billion. From Reuters: Blackboard Inc, a U.S. software company that provides learning tools for high school and university classrooms, is exploring a sale that […]
LMS & Learning Platforms
Everything you want to know about Learning Management Systems and whatever comes after them.
Giving D2L Credit Where Credit Is Due
Michael and I have made several specific criticisms of D2L’s marketing claims lately culminating in this blog post about examples based on work at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) and California State University at Long Beach (CSULB). I understand that other ed tech vendors make marketing claims that cannot always be tied to reality, but these […]
Unizin Perspective: Personalized learning’s existence and distance education experience
By reading the Unizin pitch for the State University System of Florida shared yesterday, we can see quite a few claims about the (potential) benefits to be provided by the consortium. “Make sure that the universities were not cut out of [distance ed] process”; “Secure our foothold in the digital industry”; “Promote greater control and influence over the digital learning ecosystem”; Provide “access […]
Unizin Offering “Associate” Membership For Annual $100k Fee
Alert unnamed readers prompted me after the last post on the Unizin contract to pursue the rumored secondary method of joining for $100k. You know who you are – thanks. While researching this question, I came across a presentation by the University of Florida provost to the State University System of Florida (SUSFL) seeking to […]
Instructure Is Truly Anomalous
Phil started his last post with the following: I’m not sure which is more surprising – Instructure’s continued growth with no major hiccups or their competitors’ inability after a half-decade to understand and accept what is at its core a very simple strategy. Personally, I vote for Door #1. As surprising as the competition’s seeming sense […]
Instructure: Accelerating growth in 3 parallel markets
I’m not sure which is more surprising – Instructure’s continued growth with no major hiccups or their competitors’ inability after a half-decade to understand and accept what is at its core a very simple strategy. Despite Canvas LMS winning far more new higher ed and K-12 customers than any other vendor, I still hear competitors claim that schools […]
Unizin One Year Later: View of contract reveals . . . nothing of substance
I’ve been meaning to write an update post on Unizin, as we broke the story here at e-Literate in May 2014 and Unizin went public a month later. It’s one year later, and we still have the most expensive method to get the Canvas LMS. There are also plans for a Content Relay and Analytics Relay as seen […]