This is interesting. I have previously argued that, of Blackboard’s two mobile businesses, their LMS mobile business (a.k.a. Mobile Learn) is going to come under lots of pressure to get bundled with the platform as the competition does just that, while their mobile portal business (a.k.a. Mobile Central) is likely to be a viable business for at least the next few years. Desire2Learn apparently agrees, because they have just entered the mobile portal business. Their Campus Life product appears to be a direct competitor with Blackboard Mobile Central. Details are somewhat sparse (on both products, actually, but particularly on D2L’s), but I’ll write more about this as I learn more.
Since a large group of SUNY schools is taking a closer look at D2L (we have a presentation on this down at Suffolk Community College tomorrow and via Elluminate), and I just applied to a position where D2L is their recent LMS of choice, I visited the website. I was very surprised to see the mobile option – it had seemed more overkill on BB’s part I thought.
Right now I am struggling with how students will actually use this. In a very rough effort to gauge student interest I visited two classes to ask students what they think/imagine they would do with mobile access to their LMS. Of the greatest interest: checking if assignments had been graded, checking for any updates to course schedule, and sometimes checking on course discussion forums. This doesn’t include viewing any multimedia since our faculty don’t use much. So, while I love gadgets and access, I have trouble seeing the cost/benefit relationship for campuses. (And perhaps, students might benefit from the “disconnect time”? – a different topic all together)
I look forward to your further comments as you learn more about the corp. moves with mobile ed.