Our LMS Subscription Service has been out for more than three months now, and we’d like to give a quick update(see this page for details, pricing, online signup; or sign up on right column of blog site for listserv to find out more information).
The e–Literate Big Picture subscription services are designed to help you track the changing landscape in important educational technology topics and make sure that the decisions you make today will still make sense tomorrow.
Based on our joint research with LISTedTECH and market analysis, we just published an article in TechCrunch titled “The LMS Market Glacier Is Melting”.
It would be easy to look at the market trends today for higher ed and think that nothing much has changed over the last decade. Despite the success of more recent entrants like Instructure and Schoology, Blackboard has, by far, the greatest market share, with companies like D2L, Sakai and open-source alternatives like Moodle far behind. The LMS oligopoly is nothing if not resilient, historically leaving little space for competition.
But this view by itself would be misleading. Higher education moves at glacial speeds, and judging the market based on the surface issues misses some important recent dynamics.
(And welcome, TechCrunch readers – you can find more LMS analysis at e-Literate at this link.)
e-Commerce Setup
Since we understand the challenges of institutional purchasing rules, we would like to make ordering the subscription as easy as possible. With the initial release we accepted credit cards and PayPal. Due to several requests, however, we have added an option for invoices and purchase orders as well.
Upcoming Webinars
Now that we’re past the various LMS users conferences, we are planning a September subscribers-only webinar where Michael and I discuss what we heard in more depth and hold a live Q&A.
We are also working with NobleStream to hold a series of three webinars – open to all – in November.
The Learning Platform is becoming ever more central to supporting the educational landscape as it continues to transform. Educators must parse through vendor marketing buzz while vendors must understand institutional decision-making processes. That’s where our guides, Michael Feldstein and Phil Hill come in. In our three-part series, the brain trust at e-Literate share their journey to becoming thought leaders in the Higher Ed/EdTech space. We’ll hear from change-agent educators that understand the importance of the pedagogy beyond technology platforms. Finally Phil and Michael rationalize the Learning Platform decision, making selection and implementation easier for both institutions and the myriad vendors in the marketplace.
The webinars will be held November 2, 9, and 16th at 2:00pm ET. Sign up at NobleStream here.
Upcoming Fall Report
As part of the service, we are releasing a spring and fall report each year. The fall report will give updates on market data for the US and Canadian higher education market as well as two additional components:
- Extension to Northern Europe – We are working with our partners at LISTedTECH to extend our coverage to different global regions, and this fall we will be have initial coverage of northern Europe. This will include regional market share data and additional coverage of regional LMS providers.
- Initial Vendor Profiles – One request we often see in our consulting work is to address the basic profile of each of the major LMS providers. Hold old are the platforms and companies, what size is the organization, who are the major customers, etc. The fall report will include concise summaries of these profiles.
We’ve had a great start and sincerely appreciate our early subscribers and look forward to building a rich network over time. If your school or consortium or company is facing strategic decisions on LMS usage – vendor selection, external scans to keep up with market, tracking the market and competitors, or looking at investment opportunities – we would love for you to join. Order your subscription here.
