Regular e-Literate readers know that I am a big booster of the IMS Learning Information Services specification. (For an overview of the basics of the specification, see my posts here, here, and here.) There has been a lot of news recently about adoption, and I thought it would be worthwhile to pull together a unified […]
Blackboard-Inc.
Desire2Learn Delivers IMS Basic Learning Tools Interoperability (BLTI) Support
In other IMS news, Desire2Learn has announced that they are the first LMS provider to support BLTI, a specification designed to support plugging third-party tools into an LMS. According to the press release, here’s what’s included: Management interfaces to define integrations to external learning tools (Tool Providers) and to create links New Quicklink type to […]
Fair Enough
I received the following email from George Kroner, a developer who works for Blackboard: I wanted to point out one issue I take with your recent blog post. OSCELOT, the open source organization that you mention, is not maintained by Blackboard. Rather, OSCELOT is a separate, independent organization that was founded by a number of […]
Blackboard's Response to Open Source: Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt
Blackboard has not been having a good time in the state of North Carolina. As I noted recently, the University of North Carolina (a Blackboard customer) reported highly favorable results of their pilot study of Sakai, with an outcome of further investigation into Sakai as a full replacement of Blackboard as their primary LMS. It […]
The Cost of the Blackboard Patent Suit (and Who Pays It)
An e-Literate reader comments on my post about Blackboard owing Desire2Learn money: The amount [that Blackboard will have to pay Desire2Learn, including the original award plus interest] will probably be over $3.8M USD from my rough estimates which is higher than the expected writedown Blackboard took. This should result in additional expenses that will have to […]
Blackboard Owes Desire2Learn Over Three Million Dollars
I’m a little late on this one, but late last week the U.S. Court of Appeals denied Blackboard’s rehearing petition. Their only recourse now would be to appeal to the United States Supreme Court and hope that the court miraculously decides to hear their case. As a result, Blackboard will have to return roughly $3.3 […]
UNC's Sakai Evaluation Results
The University of North Carolina, a current Blackboard customer that is evaluating Sakai, just published a very interesting report of their findings so far. Among other things, it’s a good model for schools that want to do a thorough evaluation of a platform and have the resources (i.e., staff and time) to do it right. […]