A company called Sampo IP, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of patent troll Marathon Patent Group, is suing Blackboard for patent infringement. The patents in question appear to be incredibly broad and have also been asserted against Salesforce as well as high-profile customers of collaboration companies Jive, Hyperoffice, and Rally, including Dell, Starbucks, Hewlett-Packard, Aetna, […]
Blackboard-Inc.
Ray Henderson Update
As e-Literate readers know, Ray Henderson is no longer President of Learning Platforms and is now serving on the company’s Board of Directors instead. This sort of thing naturally sets of all sorts of concerns and speculation. I had the good fortune to be able to speak with Ray today and have some details straight from the […]
Blackboard Analytics Update
In my last post, I promised that I would give an update specifically on the state of Blackboard’s learning analytics. Well, here you go. This is a summary of what I learned about their product from a chat with Mark Max, Blackboard’s VP of Learning Analytics and, to a lesser degree, with VP of User […]
Yup, Something (Good) Is Up at Blackboard
When a company the size of Blackboard makes substantial organizational changes, it can be difficult to assess what is really going on. In the beginning, the stories tend to look similar. The old CEO…decides he wants to “spend more time with his family.”1 Well-known long-time employees leave the company en masse, some of their own volition […]
BREAKING: Blackboard Uses “MOOC” in a Sentence
This week we heard the news that Blackboard…um…they are…well…something about MOOCs. They like them, I think. Or something. Look, I get it. The company has realized that they need to take more direct action in response to the MOOC trend and, while they are not yet in position to make a specific product announcements, they […]
Desire2Learn’s Analytics Product Looks Very Good
I’ve been super-busy with a consulting gig over the last few weeks and have fallen off the wagon with my blogging. This is one of the many reasons that I am grateful to have Phil as my prolific yet profound co-publisher and that we have attracted a group of terrific featured bloggers. Anyway, I thought […]
Blackboard’s New Early Warning Analytics Product
A couple of weeks ago in my post about the different types of learning analytics, I described retention early warning systems thusly: Most people don’t think about early warning systems as being in the same category as adaptive analytics, but if you consider that “adaptive” really just means “adjusting to your personal needs,” then a […]