The Moodle Users Association (MUA), a crowd-funding group for additional Moodle core development, announced today that it is open for members to join. Technically the site was internally announced on its web site last Friday, but the press release came out today. As of this writing (Thurs evening PST), 44 members have signed up: 37 at the […]
Blackboard
The Massive Decline In Larger Education Company Market Caps
After our coverage of Blackboard’s CEO change last week, we were both interviewed by the Washington Business Journal, with the following lede: Analysts and sources I spoke with Monday, both on and off the record, said the decision to bring on Bill Ballhaus as CEO was a combination of Bhatt failing to make progress building […]
Blackboard Replaces CEO Jay Bhatt: What happened
Just over four years since Providence Equity Partners acquired Blackboard and three years after they brought in Jay Bhatt to replace co-founder Michael Chasen, the company announced another change in CEO. Blackboard has removed Jay Bhatt and replaced him with Bill Ballhaus. The official reason from the announcement: Today, we are fortunate to be joined […]
Unizin RFP For LMS: An offering to appease the procurement gods?
Well this was interesting: Unizin issues an RFP for "Enterprise and Multitentant LMS" https://t.co/kRVSyzQgYI& I owe my wife an engagement ring soon — Phil Hill (@PhilOnEdTech) December 30, 2015 In a blog post from Monday, Unizin announced a public Request For Proposals (RFP) to solicit bids for an enterprise and multitenant LMS. The RFP states its […]
LMS Market Updates, Dec 2015
There seems to be a series of news and analysis on the LMS higher education market worth summarizing. Major Adoption News I posted last weekend about University of Phoenix (UoP) and their LMS. UoP is well-known for being the biggest user of a homegrown LMS for well over a decade, but in the past several years […]
Exclusive: University of Phoenix moving from homegrown platform to Blackboard Learn Ultra
The University of Phoenix has a history of using its scale to develop and rely on homegrown platforms, including the adaptive learning platform branded as “Classroom”. I wrote about this investment in 2013. The full significance of the University of Phoenix bet on adaptive learning platforms goes beyond pure dollars and became clear when the […]
Moodle Moves Give Hints of What a Post-Fork World Could Look Like
Phil and I have written about the growing tension between the interests of Moodle HQ and a those of a couple of the bigger Moodle Partners, most notably Blackboard. There are a number of ways that this tension could be resolved, but one of the more dramatic possibilities would be a fork of Moodle. While […]