The American Association of Community College’s Instructional Technology Council (ITC) has just published its 2007 Distance Education Survey Results, covering data from 154 U.S. community colleges. And there’s a lot of interesting stuff in it. Here are the headlines that I drew from it: Distance education continues to grow at a very healthy clip, particularly […]
LMS & Learning Platforms
Everything you want to know about Learning Management Systems and whatever comes after them.
Case Study on Moving from WebCT to Moodle
EDUCAUSE has posted a presentation by SUNY Delhi’s Clark Shah-Nelson on their transition from WebCT CE to Moodlerooms-hosted Moodle. It’s quite good. By all accounts (including the presentation), it has been a pretty smooth transition for Delhi. But the biggest deal is the cost comparison, which Clark lays out in his slides. The total cost […]
On Open Source, Open Standards, and Lock-in
I’ve been meaning to comment on D’Arcy Norman’s frustrations with not being able to export Moodle courses to a common standard. He makes a very important point: Moodle happily ingests those formats, acting to absorb content into what then becomes an inescapable pit of quicksand. It’s a one-way trip. Content can check in, but it […]
The Latest on the Edupatent Front
As I noted in an earlier post, I’m traveling this week, so this post is going to be relatively short and light on analysis. If you’re trying to get a comprehensive picture of what’s happening, I’d start with the article in The Chronicle. (Incidentally, Katherine Mangan, who is new to the edupatent beat at The […]
Some Court Documents
Well, it’s later than we expected, but we did finally get a copy of the jury questionnaire as well as Blackboard’s motion for prejudgment interest. (Both of these were provided by instructional media + magic and acquired from public sources.) And there are a few interesting details. Update: At the request of Blackboard’s legal counsel, […]
Blackboard Advertises an 'Open Source LMS'
Update: I just ran another Google search today (two days after the original post) and Blackboard’s ad no longer shows up. It looks like they may have pulled it. If so, good for them. A friend of mine sent me this ad, which appeared in his GMail account. Blackboard could have its ad show […]
Blackboard Bought Xythos
The Chronicle just confirmed it. For those who don’t know, Blackboard Content System is based on the Xythos Content Server product. So now Bb owns a content management engine and can integrate it pervasively with the rest of its product line. (To date, the integration between Bb Content System and their LMS is relatively weak.) […]