e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: edunomics

  • Bad News for Blackboard, Good News for Moodle

    The American Association of Community College’s Instructional Technology Council (ITC) has just published its 2007 Distance Education Survey Results, covering data from 154 U.S. community colleges. And there’s a lot of interesting stuff in it. Here are the headlines that I drew from it:

    • Distance education continues to grow at a very healthy clip, particularly in this market segment.
    • Blackboard is losing market share rapidly
    • Moodle doubled it’s market share in the past 12 months and now has the highest market share after Blackboard/WebCT in this market segment.
    • ANGEL and D2L also grew their market share.
    • We have reason to expect more LMS churn in the near future, which is bad for Blackboard.
    • The top 5 areas of likely distance learning-related service growth in this segment are (1) online student organization web site and services, (2) online counseling and advising, (3) online plagiarism evaluation, (4) audio/video streaming, and (5) online textbook sales.

    As you can imagine, the LMS market share stuff is what interests me the most at the moment.

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  • Blackboard Inc. v. Desire2Learn Inc.: “Grey” Monday March 10, 2008

    Yesterday, Desire2Learn submitted its response to Blackboard’s request for injunction (which was apparently submitted under seal) and accompanying letters from various school and university officials arguing that preventing D2L from selling their product in the United States would be against the public interest. Barry Dahl has done a terrific job of summing up the case that D2L makes in the filing. I definitely recommend reading his post. You’ll also want to read Jim Farmer’s post, below, which summarizes the current state of play with regard to the ruling on these filings that the judge will issue next Monday, based on what we know from the public court record. After reading both Barry and Jim, then I recommend that you read the two court documents themselves. They’re well written and pretty accessible–even more so after you’ve had tutorials from these two guys.

    – Michael

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  • Some Court Documents

    Well, it’s later than we expected, but we did finally get a copy of the jury questionnaire as well as Blackboard’s motion for prejudgment interest. (Both of these were provided by instructional media + magic and acquired from public sources.) And there are a few interesting details.

    Update: At the request of Blackboard’s legal counsel, we have removed the link to the motion for pre-judgment interest.

    Later Update: A link to the redacted version of the motion has been added back. In answer to some of the questions that I’ve been getting, the reason that Blackboard requested that the document be taken down in the first place is that there was a clerical error in which Exhibit D (referenced in the post below) should have been submitted under seal since it contained D2L’s client list. (Both companies have a right to keep their client lists confidential, and the customers of both companies have the right not to publicize which platform they use.) Blackboard’s legal counsel corrected the error through official channels and asked that we take down the part of the document that shouldn’t have been released in the first place. No threats were made. After thinking about it a bit and seeking a second opinion, I came to the conclusion that it was a reasonable request and took appropriate action. With Jim’s help, I got a copy of the filing minus Exhibit D and reposted it as soon as I had the chance.
    As to the question of why the instructional media + magic web site is down, it is undergoing maintenance for unrelated reasons.

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  • Should Universities Patent Their Research? Universities Say Yes. But should they?

    This is a guest blog post by Jim Farmer, Coordinator, Scholarly Systems Group at Georgetown University and editor at the eReSS project, University of Hull.

    At the December 2006 Sakai Conference in Atlanta many expressed the view that patents inhibit collaboration and innovation in teaching and learning. But that was not the view expressed by higher education representatives in last month’s Congressional hearing.

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  • Lessons from Blackboard?

    This is a guest blog post by Jim Farmer, Coordinator, Scholarly Systems Group at Georgetown University and editor at the eReSS project, University of Hull.

    Blackboard’s Second Quarter financial reports and conference call (edited mp3 audio) may say more about eLearning in higher education than it did about Blackboard. And they say a lot about Blackboard. There are hints of increased outsourcing of eLearning, expansion of an academic “suite” of integrated applications, and an Outcomes System to encourage public support of higher education based on accountability.

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  • Blackboard Announces New 'Institutional Effectiveness Platform'; Patents Pending

    From today’s press release:

    BbWorld Europe, Nice, France – February 26, 2007 – Blackboard Inc. (NASDAQ: BBBB), a leading provider of enterprise technology to the education industry, today unveiled, at the Annual BbWorld Europe 2007 Users Conference in Nice, its latest and most significant product offering, the Blackboard Outcomes System™ in front of 400 European and International e-Learning leaders. The new solution facilitates the continuous improvement of academic and administrative processes with a focus on student learning, academic programs and co-curricular activities.
     
    The Blackboard Outcomes System is a comprehensive, flexible platform to guide institutional effectiveness across the entire higher education institution or system– from classrooms to the President’s Office. It was developed with guidance from national assessment experts and dozens of academic institutions including private teaching colleges, research universities, systems, and community colleges.  The Blackboard Outcomes System leverages the capabilities and familiar user experience of the Blackboard Academic Suite™ to help institutions make evidence-based decisions, streamline assessment processes, and engage students in their own learning.

    I think it’s interesting that Blackboard is calling Outcomes its “most significant” product offering. That gives you some sense of where they think their market is going and where they think the bulk of their business is going to be in the future.

    Note also that many of Blackboard’s recent patent applications (reported by Mark Oehlert) appear to be related to this new product.

  • IMS Report on Learning Technology Satisfaction and Trends

    The IMS has issued a new report with the somewhat imposing title, “IMS GLC Learning Technology Satisfaction and Trends, North American Higher Education, 05 February 2007 Update.” You can get it here, but first you’ll have to register with the site (if you haven’t done so already). It’s important to read Section 2 of the report (and particularly the “Survey Approach and Disclaimers” subhead) carefully; it is very difficult to get definitive data for this kind of research, and the authors of the report were very careful to spell out the limitations of their methods.

    Nevertheless, there’s lots of interesting stuff here. Here are some of my own observations, in no particular order:
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