One of the trends I highlighted last summer was that the LMS or learning platform market was overlapping the educational content market.
The lines are blurring between content delivery systems (e.g. Cengage MindTap, Pearson MyLabs, etc) and LMS. Content delivery and ability to keep students engaged within the content will drive much of the broader ed tech market. This integration of markets is being seen as a strategically important issue for institutions, particularly for online programs.
While I feel quite confident in having made that description, I did not have a model, or explanation, of what was driving the trend. Nine months later, I believe the trend has proven itself empirically, as more examples emerge: Apples iBooks2 / iTunesU App, Online Education Service Providers such as 2tor combining online programs with custom learning platforms, Pearson OpenClass, MOOC startups with custom platforms such Coursera, Udacity, etc.
Last week Roger McNamee, co-founder and managing director with venture capital firm Elevation Partners, gave a presentation to the Mashable Connect conference titled “How to Revive the Web”. The presentation described how Apple won big by betting against the web and its prevailing culture (Mashable post here and Roger’s full presentation here). Roger’s theory is that Apple’s strategy was to move away from commoditized content, which most of the PC-based web (HTML4) assumed, by delivering content in a differentiated, elegant manner – tightly combining content and the delivery mechanism. Furthermore, as HTML5 emerges, this move will accelerate.
If this theory is correct, I think it helps explain the trend of the LMS market combining and blurring with the educational content market.