e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: Blackboard

  • Some big personnel changes in LMS market

    In just the past week we have had three fairly significant people depart higher ed LMS companies. This really is turning out to be a bumpy ride as the market changes.

    • Ray Henderson announced last night that he is leaving his operational role at Blackboard (President, Academic Platforms and CTO) and is moving into a role with the Board of Directors. More info from Jay Bhatt’s post here and Ray Henderson’s post here. Michael is working on an e-Literate post with more information soon. Bill Flook covered in an article here.
    • Devlin Daley, one of the two founders of Instructure, the company behind the Canvas LMS, is leaving the company as of today. I talked to Instructure rep today who indicated that Devlin is looking to get back in to startup ed tech mode, whereas Instructure is becoming a larger company. I’ll write more of an analysis on this move soon. For now I’ll just say that it is extremely rare for a tech founder to leave a company that might go public within a year or two.
    • Al Essa, the Director of Analytics Research and Strategy for Desire2Learn, has left the company to join McGraw-Hill based on his LinkedIn profile. This is curious timing, given Desire2Learn’s major focus on analytics and the Student Success System this year.

    More to come.

  • Moodle has quietly become the dominant LMS for online service providers

    One subject that we have not covered much at e-Literate lately is the market position of Moodle. Given the significant LMS market changes over the past two years, it might be worth considering how institutions are adopting and using Moodle. In the US at least, there has been a significant change – whereas in previous years Moodle growth came primarily from institutions moving away from Blackboard, today much of the growth appears to have shifted to online service providers.

    Traditional US Market

    From 2006 – 2011 Moodle grew quickly in the US, both in terms of the number of users (students, faculty) and in terms of the number of schools adopting Moodle. This growth appears to have slowed considerably since 2011, although the data can be difficult to interpret since the system is open source – anyone can download for free and run Moodle, without even notifying Moodle headquarters or often the institution.

    While the data is inconclusive, my assumption is that traditional Moodle growth – institutions adopting the LMS as the campus standard, typically moving away from Blackboard or WebCT – has significantly slowed from its peak growth in 2009 – 2011. I’ll write a separate post on this subject in the future.

    New Growth Model

    While the traditional growth may have slowed, there is a market segment in the US where Moodle is quietly dominating – as the preferred learning platform (or LMS) for online service providers.

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  • This is not your father’s Blackboard

    Thanks for inviting me to this conference in Las Vegas, but I couldn’t help notice there is no After Party. Could you point me to the BbWorld conference instead? . . . What’s that? . . . Really?? Because I just came out of a product roadmap presentation where people were clapping, and not just for improved customer service but actual product usability and features that people want. . . . OK, OK, maybe you’re right . . . But the ex-WebCT folks were actually clapping the loudest. . . . WTH?

    Blackboard’s user conference this year was unlike any previous BbWorld I’ve attended. After the WebCT acquisition in 2006, the user conferences tended to be love-hate events (love the show and good times, hate the acquisition of competitors and tin ear). After the 2009 acquisition of ANGEL and subsequent changes in the management team, the user conferences moderated to ambivalence. Many of the product announcements were exciting in the abstract, but it was not clear that product roadmaps and new features were directly addressing client concerns.

    BbWorld 2013 was the first time that I’ve seen customers have such a positive response to Blackboard presentations. At least from a short-term roadmap perspective, the product changes presented this year seemed to hit the sweet spot of what current customers have been requesting. There was a sense of appreciation and relief from customers that Blackboard was listening and reacting to them. And that is no small feat.

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  • LMS Market Update: May and June News

    There have been a number of LMS and Learning Platform announcements over the past month or two that will help shape the market over the next year or more. One trend I’ve described is the transition from an LMS market to a Learning Platform market, which includes a broader scope of products. Below are some of the notable announcements. I expect that Michael and I will write separate posts in more detail on several of these updates.

    • LMS CEO panel discussion at Learning Impact
    • Instructure, maker of Canvas LMS, raises $30M
    • Desire2Learn announces Student Success System as predictive analytics with new release
    • Sakai OAE recovers from loss of partners, rebrands as Apereo OAE
    • Coursera shifts strategy in partnering with schools, now overlaps with LMS market
    • edX finishes releasing platform code as open source
    • LMS conference season approaching

    LMS CEO panel discussion at Learning Impact

    In mid May, Inside Higher Ed’s Scott Jaschik hosted a panel discussion of the LMS CEOs at the Learning Impact conference. Blackboard’s new CEO, Jay Bhatt, was welcomed into the higher education community with the, ahem, liveliest panel discussion in recent memory. Given the all-star panel (John Baker, CEO, Desire2Learn; Jay Bhatt, CEO, Blackboard; Josh Coates, CEO Instructure; Martin Dougiamas, Moodle Founder and Lead Developer, Moodle; Manoj Kutty, CEO, LoudCloud Systems; Matt Leavy, CEO, Pearson eCollege), I’ve been surprised to see very little discussion after the event.

    But then I remembered:

    The First Rule of the LMS Panel is you do not talk about the LMS Panel

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  • Blackboard Changes Underway: Jay Bhatt Interview and Management Changes

    There is an interesting article today from Bill Flook , who has covered Blackboard as a business, including the story of Michael Chasen’s departure in late 2012 along with two rounds of layoffs.

    Blackboard Inc. has been a company in transition long before CEO Michael Chasen announced his upcoming departure.

    In fact, the presence of Blackboard’s longtime chief has been its most visible constant. So the big question coming out of Monday’s news is this: What will the ed-tech behemoth look like, sans Chasen? [snip]

    If anything, it’s surprising that Chasen stayed on so long after the private equity buyout. He and Providence had “mutually sat down and worked out the right time frame for there to be a transition,” Chasen said in an interview Monday afternoon. “I’ve been here 15 years,” he said. “While I love Blackboard, and I think there is huge opportunity in front of us, I’ve been doing this since I was 25 years old and looking for there to be a good time for me to phase out.”

    Today we are starting to get more insight into the changes, based on Bill’s interview with Jay Bhatt, Blackboard’s new CEO, and coverage of management changes at the company.

    What hasn’t changed are the external pressures. Competitors in the core learning management system (LMS) market like Instructure and Desire2Learn are eating into Blackboard’s once-dominant market share. Open source is challenging the traditional licensed software model, just as mobile and cloud-based services challenge native desktop software. Blackboard is an internationally recognizable brand, with a broad array of products and a powerful private equity player behind it. It is, however, still seen as the legacy player.

    In his first in-depth interview since joining Blackboard, Bhatt laid out his vision for navigating those challenges. And with less than half a year in the role, he’s marked off two key areas of investment: the online program management market, and international.

    Bhatt emphasized the need to grow top-line revenue.

    Bhatt was equally emphatic about what his mission at Blackboard isn’t.

    “Make no mistake, our goal is to be a top-line growth company,” he said. “Obviously, we want to be profitable, and we want to generate the returns that our investors want. But we need to grow the top line. Software companies that grow the top line effectively are really adding value to their industry, they’re not just monetizing their industry.”

    According to the article, there have been some significant management changes at Blackboard as well. Tim Hill (president of global marketing), Siegfried Behrens (president of global sales, recently hired from Microsoft) and David Mills (VP of R&D, formerly of ANGEL and MoodleRooms, key visionary behind xpLor) have all left the company in the past two weeks. Kayvon Beykpour (general manager of Blackboard Mobile and co-founder of TerriblyClever) is also on a leave of absence. Matthew Small has been promoted to president of international, and Jim Kelly from McGraw-Hill has been hired as VP of business development.

    Bill indicates that he will have more information and insight on Blackboard’s future direction coming out soon. Read the whole article here.

  • Big 3 MOOC Providers Turning One Year Old

    We are in the middle of the first anniversary of the creation of the big 3 MOOC providers (Coursera, Udacity, edX).

    • Sebastian Thrun announced the creation of Udacity on January 23, 2012 as described by Reuters.
    • Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng announced the creation of Coursera on April 18, 2012 in this NY Times article.
    • MIT and Harvard announced the creation of edX on May 2, 2012 in this MIT article.

    And what a year it’s been, especially in terms of the engagement of national media, university presidents and boards on the topic of MOOCs, online education and the future of higher education in general. I doubt there is a higher education conference this year that doesn’t mention MOOCs in one form or another.

    But one year is a seriously short time period for higher education and educational technology, which are just not used to changes on this time scale. To give some perspective, consider the following:

    • There are quite a few ed tech products that have been or will have been in beta or introductory mode for at least a year when fully released.
    • This time one year ago, few people outside of Virginia knew what a Rector or how a board of them might force a president to resign partially based on discussions about MOOCs.
    • Many LMS and almost all student information system / ERP selection processes (not even including implementation) take more than a year.

  • Snapshot of LMS Market for Large Online Programs in the US

    The transformation of the higher education LMS market continues, and I expect more changes over the next 2 – 3 years. However, it seems time to capture a key segment of the market based on two recent announcements that directly impact large online programs.

    UMUC Selects Desire2Learn

    Following a multi-year strategic study and product selection, the University of Maryland University College (UMUC) selected Desire2Learn to replace the homegrown WebTycho LMS in use for over a decade. While there has been no press release, there are now official documents publicly available that describe this effort. Per the Faculty Advisory Committee (FAC) Newsletter:

    As announced last year, UMUC is planning to replace WebTycho with another learning management system. After a great deal of questions for the vendors, references checks and tests of functionality, Desire2Learn was chosen. More than 200 faculty, staff and students worldwide were part of the decision which was reported to have been by an overwhelming majority. The roll out will occur gradually over the next year or two. [snip]

    Not only is UMUC moving away from the WebTycho platform to the Desire2Learn (D2L) learning management system, but additional changes are in the works which will transform the online learning experience for our students and faculty.

    UMUC is part of the University of Maryland system, and it has a global focus – serving over 90,000 students worldwide.

    Mississippi Community Colleges Select Canvas

    The Mississippi Virtual Community College (MSVCC) provides the LMS for the system’s online program as well as for all 15 campuses. After a 6-month RFP process, MSVCC will be migrating from Blackboard Learn and Desire2Learn and implementing Canvas as the new LMS. From the press release:

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