After Monday’s post on my confusion with Blackboard’s overall Learn strategy, I thought I would follow up with a reminder that there is one really important area where there are strong early signs that Blackboard is doing something right in a very important area: learning analytics. Learning analytics is one of those areas where there are many, […]
Dear Blackboard, I am Confused
The good news is that Blackboard, after going quiet for a while, is out giving updates again. The bad news is that the more they talk, the less I understand. A year and a half ago, I thought that I understood their Ultra strategy and had a pretty good guess about their odds of executing it. […]
UNC Learning Technology Commons: Easing the procurement problem with NGDLE
I was planning to write a descriptive post about the new UNC Learning Technology Commons, but there is already some excellent coverage. UNC’s Matthew Rascoff wrote a blog post on Medium that captures the basics quite well: A compelling recent report from EDUCAUSE proposes that the “Next Generation Digital Learning Environment” will be based on a “‘Lego’ approach,” […]
After Customer Feedback And Further Delays, Blackboard Changes Learn Ultra Strategy For LMS
A full seven months after BbWorld 2015, Blackboard has yet to move any new functionality for Learn Ultra from “in development” or “in research” to “available” according a new public webinar. That is, Learn Ultra is no further along from a customer delivery perspective than they were in July 2015, when they were already a […]
Making Lab Sections Interactive: More evidence on potential of course redesign
Two weeks ago Michael and I posted an third article on EdSurge that described an encouraging course redesign for STEM gateway courses. In our e-Literate TV series on personalized learning, we heard several first-hand stories about the power of simple and timely feedback. As described in the New York Times, administrators at the University of California, […]
College Scorecard: ED quietly adds in 700 missing colleges
It’s worth giving credit where credit is due, and the US Department of Education (ED) has fixed a problem that Russ Poulin and I pointed out where they had previously left ~700 colleges out of the College Scorecard. When the College Scorecard was announced, Russ noticed a handful of missing schools. When I did the […]
Empowering Students in Open Research
Phil and I will be writing a twice-monthly column for the Chronicle’s new Re:Learning section. In my inaugural column, “Muy Loco Parentis,” I write about how schools make data privacy decisions on behalf of the students that the students wouldn’t make for themselves, and that may even be net harmful for the students. In contrast […]