e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: Campus Computing Project

  • New data available for higher education LMS market

    Despite much talk about the demise of the LMS market, the end is nowhere in sight. Unlike many of the newer learning platform concepts (e.g. MOOCs, free platforms, unbundled learning platforms), the LMS market has an established business model and real revenues. Just today came news of an investment analysis report predicting that total LMS market (higher ed, corporate training, K-12) would triple in revenue by 2018, moving from $2.6B to $7.8B. The LMS ain’t sexy, but it’s still important.

    global_LMS_stacked_by_typeThis is why I have found it surprising how long it is taking to move from survey-based and anecdotal market information to harder data directly measured by the actual LMS implementations. Until recently, that is, when there are at least two very useful sites available.

     

    Edutechnica

    George Kroner, a former engineer at Blackboard who now works for University of Maryland University College (UMUC), has developed what may be the most thorough measurement of LMS adoption in higher education at Edutechnica (OK, he’s better at coding and analysis than site naming). This side project (not affiliated with UMUC) started two months ago based on George’s ambition to unite various learning communities with better data. He said that he was inspired by the Campus Computing Project (CCP) and that Edutechnica should be seen as complementary to the CCP.

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  • Please Fill Out the Campus Computing Survey

    This is an incredible time of change in the United States higher education LMS market. Here are just some of the relevant developments that are driving big movements:

    • WebCT is in its last year of Blackboard support, forcing many campuses to migrate either to Blackboard or to something else.
    • Instructure is on an absolute tear, growing at an unprecedented rate.
    • Blackboard acquired Moodlerooms, the best known Moodle support vendor in this market.
    • Desire2Learn got a major infusion of cash, presumably based on their own market success.
    • Recent turmoil in the Sakai OAE project is causing the Sakai community to go through a period of reflection and retrenchment.
    • New LMS entrants are coming into the market right and left, including but not limited to MOOC platforms like Coursera.

    We all have our observations and intuitions about what all of this adds up to in terms of the big picture. But if you really want to know what is going on, there is only one place to go to get reliable, solid, proven data: the Campus Computing Project. I know that campus folk get inundated with surveys on top of the increasingly onerous workloads. But if you want a clear picture of what is going on in the LMS market today, then I urge you to fill out the Campus Computing survey or, if you are not the person responsible for doing so, then let the person on your campus who is responsible know just how important you think the survey is. The survey closes on October 24th and goes public at EDUCAUSE on November 7th.

    Please take this seriously.

  • Yummy, Yummy Data

    EDUCAUSE is just a few weeks away, which means that the release of the annual Campus Computing survey is also just a few weeks away. It’s pretty much the only decent source of data we have on LMS trends (among many other things) in higher education. Since we are arguably midway through a four-year LMS market transition as WebCT and ANGEL get end-of-lifed, I look forward to this year’s survey results with great anticipation. And, of course, we’ll analyze the implications of it here on e-Literate.

    In the meantime, if you are one of the people responsible for filling out the survey at your institution, make sure you get it done!

  • Interview With Casey Green

    The 2010 Campus Computing survey is out, and it’s chock full of interesting information. I was fortunate to be able to sit down with Casey Green, the Founding Director of the Campus Computing Project, and talk about some of the highlights and a few related topics. I apologize for the abrupt ending; my camera ran out of disk space in the middle of Casey’s last answer. In any event, there’s good stuff here about the transition happening in the LMS market, the challenges of getting good survey data, ((Many thanks to the ever-thoughtful Scott Siddall for suggesting this line of inquiry.)) and more.

    You should definitely also read the survey report. It covers a lot of topics that we didn’t even touch on in the interview.

  • Open Forum Brain Dump

    I’m sitting in my hotel room near LAX early in the morning and I have a little time between the legs of my trip to reflect on the amazing experience I just had at The OPEN Forum. I must say, Thanos Partners did a superb job of organizing a fun, fascinating, and frictionless conference. (And the food. OMG.) I expect to write a number of posts reflecting on different facets that were covered during the forum, but this first one will mainly be a brain dump to capture a bunch of raw observations before they have a chance to fly out of my head.

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