In a little-reported event the week of Thanksgiving, Desire2Learn let go 28 employees. The only public report I’m aware of comes from The Record out of Desire2Learn’s hometown of Kitchener, Ontario in Canada. E-learning company Desire2Learn has cut about 25 workers from its product development department. Virginia Jamieson, spokesperson for the Kitchener-based company, said nine […]
Educational technology
Layoffs and reorganization at Blackboard
Bill Flook, who covers the DC technology scene for Business Journals, just interviewed Blackboard CEO Jay Bhatt about last week’s layoff. The full article can be found here. From a quick read, it looks like Blackboard is executing on two key priorities: Trimming the fat caused by years of acquisitions and redundant operations; and Completing […]
More Blogging on Automated Essay Grading
Sometime guest blogger and friend of e-Literate Elijah Mayfield has another great post up on using machine learning tools in the service of improving student writing over at his company blog. However you may feel about the technology, the exploration that he’s doing raises some important question about what good feedback on writing is. This aspect of […]
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 […]
CEO Transition at Blackboard is Latest Move in Corporate Turnaround
On Monday of this past week Michael Chasen announced that he is leaving Blackboard, the company he co-founded in 1997 and has led as CEO since 2001. Blackboard simultaneously announced the appointment of Jay Bhatt, a software industry executive as the immediate replacement. As Rip Empson has noted in TechCrunch, this is the end of an […]
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 […]
What Are Ed Tech Entrepreneurs Good For?
The recent ASU Education Innovation Summit, which brought together venture capitalists with aspiring ed tech entrepreneurs, created quite a stir in the edublogosphere and the edutwitterverse. A lot of the reaction came from people who were watching from a distance via video. Audrey Watters, for example, wrote an epic rant on her frustrations. There were […]