e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Category: LMS & Learning Platforms

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

  • Desire2Learn Responds to the Blackboard Pledge

    Here’s the meat from the full post:

    We at Desire2Learn are unwavering in our position that the patent claims are invalid and unenforceable against Open Source, our competitors, and us, and that we do not infringe on the claims. We look forward to a decision by the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) on our comprehensive petition for an Inter Partes re-examination of the patent. We will continue to invite Blackboard to dissipate the cloud that it has cast over innovation and the educational ecosystem. The “pledge” does not alter Blackboard’s attempt to dictate educational software business models. We will continue to resist Blackboard’s attempts to monopolize the methods by which universities, schools, libraries, and other entities build their educational platforms. Blackboard continues – with the “pledge” perhaps even to a greater degree – to decree with whom education and business worldwide may conduct business. The users – not the vendor – should determine which competitive offering best fits the needs at their institution. By attempting to dictate educational software business models, Blackboard appears to fear competition.

    In taking the “pledge,” Michael Chasen claimed: “[Blackboard is] committed to the open exchange of ideas, collaboration and innovation . . . [t]his pledge is part of that commitment and our continued efforts to work collaboratively with the e-Learning community to foster greater openness and interoperability.” In light of Blackboard’s purported change of heart it suggests in its “pledge”, and the USPTO’s decision to grant re-examination of the patent, we encourage Blackboard to give meaning to Mr. Chasen’s words, and to join us in requesting that the court stay the litigation until the USPTO has had an opportunity to complete its work. This action would enable all members of the community – including Blackboard – to focus on their primary objectives.

  • Web Analytics, Gaming Technology, and the LMOS

    A while back, a blog conversation between Mark Oehlert and Lee Kraus regarding how to knit together lots of embedded, widget/gadget like learning applications into a coherent picture of what and how learners are doing. To begin with, the idea they’re toying with is very similar to the LMOS but focused on a corporate market and workflow learning. What really got me thinking, though, was when they started talking about a dashboard somewhat like Google Analytics to track learner progress. (Those corporate folks sure do love their dashboards.) Something about this really clicked with me, but I couldn’t quite articulate how I would want to see this work in an academic environment.

    That is, until Raph Koster’s post put me onto VisitorVille–“Web Stats in Video Game Format!”

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  • Bodington at the Sakai Conference

    This is the first installment of my promised non-patent (and non-patented) coverage of the Sakai Atlanta conference. I’m going to start with Bodington, in part because I continue to be really impressed with these guys. In my opinion, they are doing some of the most interesting work in the LMS/VLE space today. They are also the furthest along of anyone in terms of realizing the kind of system design that my colleagues and I have been calling an LMOS.

    As you may know, Bodington is going to be using Sakai as the framework for the next generation of their platform. I wrote a few posts about Bodington a while back, shortly after the announcement. The conference gave me several opportunities to hear more from the Bod team about their thinking, their project, and their progress.

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  • What the Sakai/Moodle/ATutor Re-Examination Request Really Means

    By now you’ve probably seen that the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has filed a request to re-examine Blackboard’s patent with the USPTO on behalf of Sakai, Moodle, and ATutor. You may have also seen that D2L has filed a different kind of re-examination request with the USPTO. (SFLC’s request is what’s known as ex parte, while D2L’s is inter partes.) I’ll have more to say about the legal maneuvers in tomorrow’s post. For now, I’d like to address a larger context.

    The Sakai/Moodle/ATutor request is generally being characterized as the “Open Source” response to Blackboard’s patent. This is unfortunate, as is the fact that SFLC is perceived to be leading the charge. Because to my mind, the most important message from this filing to Blackboard and the market has nothing to do with Open Source.

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  • The Economic Impact of the Blackboard Patent Suit

    One of the topics that I’ve been meaning to get to since EDUCAUSE is the likely impact of the patent suit on the financial health of Blackboard, Desire2Learn, and the other LMS players. I got to talk to a number of university decision-makers and observe the activity at the booths of various LMS vendors. My conclusion? In the short term, both Blackboard and D2L are likely to do just fine. However, a slowdown 9-12 months out is likely.

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  • Bodington Review, Part II

    In my last post, I discussed Bodington’s unique access control system and how this affects teaching affordances. I started there deliberately and at the suggestion of my Bodington expert and guide, Oxford University’s Paul Trafford. Today, Stephen Downes comments sarcastically, “Yes, that’s what we all look for first when trying to decide whether an LMS is worth the effort.” And that’s exactly the point. Bodington’s most compelling strengths as a learning environment are precisely not what we tend to look at first when “trying to decide whether an LMS is worth the effort.” (Not that assessing whether Bodington was “worth the effort” was my goal in any case.) As we all know, seemingly subtle implementation details can have disproportionate impact on the quality of the learning environment. Permissions is one of those unfortunately obscure areas that LMS developers often get wrong and, as Paul had suggested would be the case, I immediately saw that Bod’s system opened up pedagogical possibilities that are not practical on other systems. For example, Bodington appears to support very sophisticated multi-role groupwork, including but not limited to simulations, that would be much harder to do in learning environments with less flexible permissions systems. Is this difference important enough to look at first? I guess that depends on what you are looking for.

    Be warned: I’m going to continue my review by looking at other aspects of Bodington that are also not the kinds of things people typically look at first when trying to decide “whether an LMS is worth the effort”. If what you’re looking for is a generic LMS review, then don’t bother reading further and consider starting at the Edutools page for it instead. (more…)

  • Bodington Review, Part I

    Here’s an interesting announcement out of the UK:

    The Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Hull, and the UHI Millennium Institute announce the formation of the Tetra Collaboration, the outcome of a series of meetings and a major summit held at the University of Oxford on the 25th-26th September 2006.

    The goal of the Tetra Collaboration is to coordinate activities across the member organisations so as to more efficiently develop and deploy open source enterprise applications of use to UK and European universities and colleges. By working together we can share common solutions to better serve the needs of students and academics, and each of the institutions named is committed to making tangible contributions into the collaboration.

    The Tetra Collaboration will work together on projects that address the needs of education, research, technical infrastructure, service oriented architectures (SOA), federated systems, and application frameworks.

    Tetra will demonstrate the potential of the JISC’s e-Framework, will be built on open standards and IMS specifications, and is committed to developing sustainable community source solutions for education.

    One of the first Tetra projects will be to continue the work of the Bodington (4) open source learning management system to produce Bodington – Next Generation or Bodington NG. This will combine elements of the Sakai open source framework with the pedagogically strong Bodington toolset. A major design goal of Bodington NG is to develop and implement an SOA enterprise e-framework.

    So the Tetra Collaboration will be working to develop a standards-based flexible framework, drawing on service-oriented architecture, that will enable federated virtual learning environments. And it will be using Sakai as one of its components. If you’re a regular reader of e-Literate, then you know that I couldn’t possibly resist finding out more about this effort. So, with the help and support of Oxford University’s Paul Trafford, I set out to learn a little bit more about Bodington. (more…)