e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: Blackboard

  • Lore Announcement Shows Promise of Cloud-Based Platforms: Low Cost of Design

    You have to give credit where it’s due – Lore is a fast-moving ed tech startup that is not resting on its laurels. The New York based learning platform company has already rebranded (changing its name from Coursekit to Lore) and rewritten its core platform from the ground up. All in its first year.

    In their latest press release:

    Since launching seven months ago, instructors at over 600 schools—including Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton—have adopted the platform. Lore gives courses a home online, providing management tools like a gradebook, and a Facebook-like environment for students to communicate with each other. [snip]

    “We’ve completely re-designed the platform in the new version,” said 21-year-old CEO, Joe Cohen. “It’s an order of magnitude more beautiful, easy to use, and powerful. ”A highlight of the new version, instructors now have the ability to make their courses available for the public to “audit.” Additionally, Lore now provides all students and instructors with individual profiles to showcase their background, academic achievements, and aspirations.

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  • Recent LMS Selections Hint at Continuing Market Changes

    Now that we’re in the middle of June – near the end of the fiscal year for many schools and leading up to user conferences for many LMS vendors – we are starting to see some significant LMS and learning platform announcements. While we typically have a surge in announcements this time of year, this year there are indications from the recent decisions on the continuing changes to the LMS market.

    San Jose State University selects Instructure Canvas to replace Desire2Learn

    According to this article from the student newspaper in February, initial indications were that SJSU might leave Desire2Learn for Moodle, primarily based on cost considerations.

    Students who have learned Desire2Learn, D2L, over the past three years may have to learn a new learning management system next fall.

    In the Academic Senate meeting on Feb. 13, Provost Ellen Junn announced that SJSU may be moving to a new system, called Moodle, after the spring semester.[snip]

    According to Provost Junn, SJSU’s contract with D2L cost $361,198.31 each year, while Fresno State spends about $75,000 on Moodle.

    “(The price) varies from institution to institution,” Junn said.  “The more students you have, the more (the learning management system’s) charge.”

    Update: Fresno State uses Blackboard, not Moodle, as their campus LMS, so direct comparison of costs does not make sense as reported. The relevant point is that cost was a driver for the SJSU re-evaluation.

    The task force mentioned in the article has now finished their work, and the decision was made to switch, not to Moodle but to Instructure’s Canvas LMS. In a letter to the campus last week, the provost notified of the decision.

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  • Summary of Statements by Key Players in Blackboard Announcement, Including Competitors

    Given all the news and discussion surrounding Blackboard’s strategy change last week, I thought that it would be useful to collect the public statements from Blackboard and their competitors in one place. No analysis, no interviews, just statements. I have a feeling that this might provide a rich source of analysis 6 – 12 months from now.

    Blackboard Official Announcements

    On March 26th, Blackboard made four simultaneous announcements through press release. They also released two additional press releases based on these four announcements.

    Blackboard / Moodlerooms / NetSpot / Moodle / Severance Key Blogs and Interviews

    Subsequently, several of the key players in the Blackboard announcements made statements through their own blogs or through media interviews. (more…)

  • Blackboard Confronts Erosion of Market Share, Makes a Major Change in Strategy

    In a series of announcements that has the educational technology world buzzing, Blackboard reversed their strategy of their core LMS business.

    Most of the discussion in articles and blogs follows the meme of Blackboard entering open source, or even the meme of Blackboard acquiring competitors. I think the news is more significant than either of these two memes.

    Blackboard just did a 180-degree turn on their strategy for their core LMS business. They have moved from consolidating all customers into Learn 9.1 to providing products and services that are almost LMS-agnostic. As Dr. Chuck described:

    The notion that we will somehow find the “one true LMS” that will solve all problems is simply crazy talk and has been for quite some time.

    There is another aspect to this story not described in yesterday’s press releases and the associated articles and blogs. This is the first public strategic decision by Blackboard since they were acquired by Providence Equity Partners. I suspect that if you take all four of Blackboard’s announcements within the context of the private equity ownership, the underlying strategy and rationale make much more sense.

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  • What If OpenClass Succeeds in Disrupting LMS Market?

    Right now the e-Literate site is close to over-heating from Michael’s voluminous posts – all very thoughtful, but we’re going to need some WordPress coolant.

    During discussions over the past week in person and over blogs, I’ve had three people ask essentially the same question – will Pearson’s OpenClass LMS offering and associated corporate strategy lead to more competition or less competition in the LMS space for higher ed, or how will the competitive landscape change?  Obviously the nature of this question is speculative with no concrete answers, but I do think that technology market trends can help us with an educated guess.

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  • Ambivalent on Ed Tech: The EDUCAUSE Re-write

    Now that I’ve had time to digest the implications of EDUCAUSE 2011 – which were significant, but not as mind-blowing as the Reading Market experience – I keep going back to a post I wrote earlier this year (although not on e-Literate).  In that post contrasting a Gartner report on IT spending with an Ambient Insight report on ed tech and online spending, I argued that ambivalence was the key to understanding both reports in context.  Likewise, based on the hype and reality of ed tech at EDUCAUSE, ambivalence can help us understand future implications for education.

    One of the benefits of blog posting is the ability to wholesale plagiarize yourself where needed (ed – I’ll see you in court, Mr. Hill).  Herewith is my rewrite of that post based on this year’s EDUCAUSE experience.

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  • Analysis of Blackboard Response to Recent Disclosure of Security Vulnerabilities

    There’s been an interesting set of public relations based on the recent news of Blackboard security vulnerabilities.  SC Magazine’s Australian edition broke a story on September 16 about an investigation by two or more anonymous Australian universities working with a security firm, Securus Global.  In conjunction with the magazine, this investigation exposed a number of security vulnerabilities with Blackboard Learn 8.0, 9.0 and 9.1 (the mainline legacy LMS from Blackboard, but not the WebCT or ANGEL acquired LMS product lines).  Blackboard has confirmed the majority of the issues are valid and issued a security advisory on September 16, subsequently updated on September 22.

    That is where the agreements stop, however.  Blackboard took issue with the tone of the article in a blog post from September 23, subsequently updated on September 27.  Blackboard disputes the assertions that they were not responsive to customer requests, and further, they are trying to downplay the significance of the vulnerabilities. (more…)