Here are my plain English interpretations of the 44 Blackboard patent claims. From what I can tell, the following Learning Management Systems have most or all of the features listed in the claims and therefore may infringe on the patent: (more…)
Category: LMS & Learning Platforms
Everything you want to know about Learning Management Systems and whatever comes after them.
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Blackboard Patents the LMS
I’m surprised there hasn’t been more uproar about this yet. The ever-brilliant US Patent and Trademark Office has apparently granted Blackboard a patent for…well…pretty much anything remotely related to learning management systems. As I read it, Blackboard basically owns the patent on any sort of groupware at all that is used for teaching purposes. This could have very serious consequences for both proprietary and Open Source competitors–and I define “competitors” as loosely as possible. (You could probably slam Drupal with this under the right circumstances, for example.)
For your convenience, I have copied the “Summary of the Invention” section from the patent:
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Widgets, Gadgets, and the LMOS
Mark Oehlert has a great post up on the implications of the proliferation of tools like Apple Widgets, Yahoo! Widgets, Google Gadgets, and so on, for learning environment design. (Some of you may recall that Apple widgets figured prominently in one of my early LMOS posts.) Mark’s post is good enough to be worth quoting at length: (more…)
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Speaking at AACE Ed-Media Next Month
I’ll be participating in the Association for Advancement of Computing in Education‘s Ed-Media 2006 Conference on James Dalziel‘s panel as part of the Learning Management Systems Symposium. Here’s the description of the panel:
It only took a decade for the LMS to go from being a good idea to being a software system used by most universities. But does the LMS have a certain future? Growing challenges may soon disrupt the existing marketplace � these include:
- Frustration among many leading LMS users with the slow pace of pedagogical innovation by LMS vendors;
- Ongoing difficulties in integrating other products into LMS platforms;
- The rise of other major learning technologies such as Repositories, Learning Content Management systems, Assessment systems, Virtual Classrooms and Learning Design systems;
- New approaches to building software based on a “Service Oriented Architecture/Approach” (SOA); and
- The increasing impact of open source software, and open standards.
Perhaps the greatest challenge may arise from a fundamental shift away from LMSs as the central “platform” for learning. An alternative vision for Learning Platforms is growing around the concept of an overarching portal system that integrates various specialist learning systems (such as repositories, learning design, etc) into a composite learning systems framework (sometimes called a Learning Management Operating System � LMOS). This session will explore current and future challenges for LMSs, how LMSs may respond, and alternative visions for Learning Platforms.
I’ll be able to post the transcript of my paper after the proceedings are published.
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BRR Report Published
I am pleased to announce that our report on BRR and LMSs for the Observatory on Borderless higher education has been published. Here’s the description:
Apples to Apples: Guidelines for Comparative Evaluation of Proprietary and Open Educational Technology Systems
Ken Udas and Michael Feldstein, SUNY Learning Network at the State University of New York, USA – May 2006Selecting a learning management technology has increasingly become a mission critical and strategic decision for higher education institutions. As technology supported and online learning has become more prevalent and learning management technologies more important institutional features, the selection environment has become increasingly complex. This paper presents a comparative model developed specifically for evaluating learning management software for adoption decisions in which open source software (OSS) and proprietary options are under consideration in higher education. It is intended to support senior academic administrators and policy makers who are responsible for or influence the software evaluation and selection process by proposing a methodology that accounts for organisational context and software system characteristics, while also providing the advantage of cross-organisational comparison.
Unfortunately, it is only accessible via a paid subscription. However, they do offer a free trial that I assume would allow you access to this report plus other valuable resources published by the Observatory. (And if you do either get the free trial or subscribe, please do Ken and me a favor and let them know that it was our report that attracted your attention. Thanks.)
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Wikis to Go
Speaking of Murugan, he has a great post up about making wikis work offline and points to the nice Wiki2Go tool. At SLN, we think having offline capabilities are valuable for faculty (and, personally, I think they are at least as valuable for students as well). As Murugan points out, there is some common ground with the road warrior. I think we have to assume that higher ed learners are road warriors, in a way. Maybe that road is between work and home, but the point is that they are learning online because they are on the move and need to take their courses with them.
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A Conversation About BRR and LMSs
I’ve been meaning to write this up for a couple of weeks now. Ken Udas and I recently had a great conversation with folks from OpenBRR and Edutools/WCET about creating a community and framework to evaluate both Open Source and proprietary LMSs, drawing on the knowledge and resources of both OpenBRR and Edutools. In attendance were Tony Wasserman from Carnegie Mellon West, Murugan Pal of SpikeSource, Scott Leslie of BCcampus (and EdTechPost fame), Russell Poulin of WCET, and Bruce Landon of Douglass College (and LandOnline fame). What follows are some notes from the conversation.