You may have seen this week’s announcement from Instructure of their new Canvas Network to support MOOCs and other open courses. Blackboard has already been dipping its toe in this water, having had Curtiss Bonk run a MOOC on CourseSites. I also find it significant that Blackboard (somewhat awkwardly) made an attempt to remind the market […]
Kuali: A Primer for Community Source Administrative Systems in Higher Ed
I was recently invited to attend a user conference – Kuali Days in Austin, TX – and was struck by the disconnect between Kuali’s relatively low profile and the excitement expressed by the institutional representatives attending the conference. Before getting to any analysis of Kuali and its prospects, however, I need to lay out the […]
Is Higher Education Ready For Rapid Evolution of xMOOCs?
Recently I wrote a post arguing that xMOOCs such as Coursera, edX and Udacity will likely evolve and that “while the current examples of massive online courses are interesting, the real potential of MOOCs will be revealed in future generations.” Today Antioch College announced that it is creating a new MOOC-for-credit partnership with Coursera. The […]
Romney and Obama Education Advisors On Higher Education
OPINION Regardless of who is elected president, there will be a significant impact on higher education. The focus will be on supporting academic majors that immediately contribute to the economy—measured by starting salary, supporting students who can complete a degree-program, increasing access only for those who can afford the cost of higher education, and expanding […]
I’m Starting a Consulting Practice
It’s been a wild year-and-a-half working at Cengage Learning. I got to work on a project that I believe is one of the best educational technology ideas that I’ve seen in the last decade. I got to manage a product team and budget for the go-forward, mission-critical digital product of a company with a billion […]
Postscript to CEO Transition at Blackboard
There are three additional management changes at Blackboard not mentioned in my recent post – two announced over the past week and one announced in April. These changes are worth noting as they further back up the point that Blackboard is in turnaround mode. What should we expect from the future Blackboard? I believe the […]
CEO Transition at Blackboard is Latest Move in Corporate Turnaround
On Monday of this past week Michael Chasen announced that he is leaving Blackboard, the company he co-founded in 1997 and has led as CEO since 2001. Blackboard simultaneously announced the appointment of Jay Bhatt, a software industry executive as the immediate replacement. As Rip Empson has noted in TechCrunch, this is the end of an […]