In what has to be the softest launch ever, McGraw Hill has been quietly talking about their new personalized learning authoring system. If you ask them when it will be available to all customers, they will tell you “right now.” But since it doesn’t even have a name yet, I’m not sure how customers would […]
Georgia Tech and Udacity MOOC Degree: Missing targets but still worth watching
Melissa Korn wrote an article yesterday in the Wall Street Journal giving a progress report on that Georgia Tech / Udacity MOOC degree (the master’s in computer science). The Georgia Tech online computer-science program is relatively massive: It has 2,789 students enrolled this semester, compared with 312 in the campus-based version. It’s on track to […]
Personalized Learning and the Teacher
A few weeks ago, Jonathan Rees wrote a post calling out that, no matter what potential of so-called “personalized learning” for improving student outcomes, there is a potential—and a temptation—for it to be abused as a method of lowering (labor) costs in a way that also lowers educational quality and effectiveness. This is a serious and realistic concern, particularly as long as personalized learning is framed as a product rather than a set of teaching strategies.
LMS Market Updates, Dec 2015
There seems to be a series of news and analysis on the LMS higher education market worth summarizing. Major Adoption News I posted last weekend about University of Phoenix (UoP) and their LMS. UoP is well-known for being the biggest user of a homegrown LMS for well over a decade, but in the past several years […]
Plus Ca Change: About that ed tech adoption curve
All the same We take our chances Laughed at by Time, Tricked by Circumstances Plus ca change, Plus c’est la meme chose The more that things change, The more they stay the same – Rush, Circumstances Over the past few years I have increased my usage of the technology adoption curve – originating from Everett Rogers and extended […]
Exclusive: University of Phoenix moving from homegrown platform to Blackboard Learn Ultra
The University of Phoenix has a history of using its scale to develop and rely on homegrown platforms, including the adaptive learning platform branded as “Classroom”. I wrote about this investment in 2013. The full significance of the University of Phoenix bet on adaptive learning platforms goes beyond pure dollars and became clear when the […]
Moodle Moves Give Hints of What a Post-Fork World Could Look Like
Phil and I have written about the growing tension between the interests of Moodle HQ and a those of a couple of the bigger Moodle Partners, most notably Blackboard. There are a number of ways that this tension could be resolved, but one of the more dramatic possibilities would be a fork of Moodle. While […]