A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend the BbWorld conference and conduct a private interview with Chief Technology Officer and President of Academic Platforms Ray Henderson. ((As an aside, I did not know that Ray also holds the CTO title until I went to the Blackboard web site to check his title when sitting down to write this post. I don’t know how new that title is.)) What I learned is that the company is embarking on a fairly radical, high-risk/high-reward strategy of re-architecting both their platform and their business model. The implications of what they are attempting are much larger than you might infer from the press releases.
Category: LMS & Learning Platforms
Everything you want to know about Learning Management Systems and whatever comes after them.
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LMS Market Updates: June and July News
Since my most recent post on LMS market updates almost two months ago, there have been a number of LMS selection projects that have been completed. This time period includes the users’ conferences for most of the major LMS solutions. Below are some of the notable selections in reverse order of number of students (a subjective measure, but one worth considering).
University of Central Florida moves from Blackboard Vista to Instructure Canvas
UCF, which touts itself as the second largest public university in the United States (58,000 students, behind only Arizona State University), selected Canvas after a 6 month evaluation process that was triggered by the end-of-life notice for Vista. The full migration should be complete by the Spring 2013 term. The UCF evaluation process looked at three solutions in detail – Blackboard Learn 9.1, Desire2Learn Learning Suite and Instructure Canvas – comparing each to the existing Vista implementation.
See information at the bottom of this post about the LMS selection website available from UCF.
Sheridan College moves from Blackboard Vista to Desire2Learn Learning Suite
Sheridan College, a Canadian “institution with over 17,000 full-time and 35,000 continuing education students”, recently selected Desire2Learn as their LMS provider, replacing Vista based on the product end-of-life. From the press release:
Following an exhaustive internal consultation that involved a working committee of 40 members including managers, IT representatives, faculty support staff, faculty members, and student union representatives, Sheridan concluded that Desire2Learn Learning Suite most closely matched the college’s criteria. [snip]
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Lore Announcement Shows Promise of Cloud-Based Platforms: Low Cost of Design
You have to give credit where it’s due – Lore is a fast-moving ed tech startup that is not resting on its laurels. The New York based learning platform company has already rebranded (changing its name from Coursekit to Lore) and rewritten its core platform from the ground up. All in its first year.
In their latest press release:
Since launching seven months ago, instructors at over 600 schools—including Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton—have adopted the platform. Lore gives courses a home online, providing management tools like a gradebook, and a Facebook-like environment for students to communicate with each other. [snip]
“We’ve completely re-designed the platform in the new version,” said 21-year-old CEO, Joe Cohen. “It’s an order of magnitude more beautiful, easy to use, and powerful. ”A highlight of the new version, instructors now have the ability to make their courses available for the public to “audit.” Additionally, Lore now provides all students and instructors with individual profiles to showcase their background, academic achievements, and aspirations.
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Blackboard and MoodleRooms: An insight to private equity
There has been speculation about Blackboard’s acquisition of MoodleRooms and its announcements about support of open-source learning systems. This is also an opportunity to see decision-making by Blackboard owner Providence Equity. The motivation of a private equity firm is rapid increase in the value of its assets. Some of Blackboard initiatives may take several years to take final form; perhaps longer than private equity objectives permit.
Blackboard describes their software business saying: “We typically license our individual software applications either on a stand-alone basis or bundled as part of one of our six product lines: Blackboard Learn Blackboard Transact Blackboard Connect Blackboard Mobile Blackboard Collaborate and Blackboard Analytics.” Professional services account for 8% of revenue; product for 92%.
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University of Michigan and Indiana University pause investment in Sakai OAE
In news that seems to be well understood in the Sakai community but not elsewhere, Sakai founding members the University of Michigan and Indiana University have collectively decided to pause investment in the Sakai Open Academic Environment (OAE) project – formerly known as Sakai 3.
Most institutions working with Sakai are using the Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE), formerly known as Sakai 2 – think of CLE as an enterprise LMS like Blackboard or Desire2Learn. Sakai OAE is a next-generation learning platform based on learner-center, collaboration design originally released as version 1.0 in September 2011. I cannot think of a direct comparison to OAE in a commercial offering, but that is part of the difference. CLE is essentially an evolutionary approach to the LMS, whereas OAE is a revolutionary approach to a learning platform based on different use cases. The Michigan and Indiana decision affects their participation in OAE but does not change their participation in CLE.
Ian Dolphin, executive director of the Sakai foundation, made an announcement dated June 7th:
I wanted to appraise you of a recent development in the Sakai OAE project. Indiana University and the University of Michigan recently decided, for a variety of local factors, to pause their investment in the project effective July 1st in order to re-assess institutional direction. We are all aware of the challenging environment facing higher education and understand that local priorities sometimes change institutional involvement in collaborative ventures such as ours.
The remaining project partners have met to effect planning in this new circumstance. They remain committed to the success of OAE, are heartened by the substantive advances made in recent months, and are confident of a sustainable future path.
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Cisco Networking Academy Selects Canvas as New LMS to Replace Homegrown System
It’s summertime, so the LMS news continues . . .
Cisco Networking Academy, which bills itself as the “world’s largest classroom” with over 1 million students in 165 countries, announced that the program has selected Instructure’s Canvas as its new LMS, replacing a homegrown system in use for over 15 years. The initial announcement was made at Instructure’s user conference, and a more formal announcement will be made Monday at the Cisco Networking Academy conference in California.
Cisco Networking Academy is the company’s “largest and longest running corporate social responsibility program”, meaning that there is no charge for public and non-profit institutions. Despite the program’s size, the nature of the Networking Academy is often misunderstood – is not a corporate training program, but rather an hardware-neutral educational program in partnership with over 10,000 High Schools and Higher Education institutions worldwide.
Instructure also released their learning analytics option, as described by Audrey Watters.
I’ll have more analysis on the announcements early next week.
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Recent LMS Selections Hint at Continuing Market Changes
Now that we’re in the middle of June – near the end of the fiscal year for many schools and leading up to user conferences for many LMS vendors – we are starting to see some significant LMS and learning platform announcements. While we typically have a surge in announcements this time of year, this year there are indications from the recent decisions on the continuing changes to the LMS market.
San Jose State University selects Instructure Canvas to replace Desire2Learn
According to this article from the student newspaper in February, initial indications were that SJSU might leave Desire2Learn for Moodle, primarily based on cost considerations.
Students who have learned Desire2Learn, D2L, over the past three years may have to learn a new learning management system next fall.
In the Academic Senate meeting on Feb. 13, Provost Ellen Junn announced that SJSU may be moving to a new system, called Moodle, after the spring semester.[snip]
According to Provost Junn, SJSU’s contract with D2L cost $361,198.31 each year, while Fresno State spends about $75,000 on Moodle.
“(The price) varies from institution to institution,” Junn said. “The more students you have, the more (the learning management system’s) charge.”
Update: Fresno State uses Blackboard, not Moodle, as their campus LMS, so direct comparison of costs does not make sense as reported. The relevant point is that cost was a driver for the SJSU re-evaluation.
The task force mentioned in the article has now finished their work, and the decision was made to switch, not to Moodle but to Instructure’s Canvas LMS. In a letter to the campus last week, the provost notified of the decision.