e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: Instructure

  • The Future of Sakai: My View

    As a member of the Sakai Foundation Board, I have at least the appearance of conflict of interest in any analysis I write about Sakai. That’s why I encouraged Phil to write his own, independent analysis of the recent developments around Sakai OAE. I was happy to support him as one source for the article but not as editor. In fact, in keeping with his previous coverage of the Sakai OAE woes, Phil did not show me his post draft before he published it. This is as it should be. We strive for objectivity and independence here at e-Literate.

    But now that Phil has done his work, I would like to offer up my own personal reflections on the current state of the Sakai software and community and where they could go from here. In the process, I will do my best to make my relationship to the project clear.

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  • LMS Market Updates: June and July News

    Since my most recent post on LMS market updates almost two months ago, there have been a number of LMS selection projects that have been completed. This time period includes the users’ conferences for most of the major LMS solutions. Below are some of the notable selections in reverse order of number of students (a subjective measure, but one worth considering).

    University of Central Florida moves from Blackboard Vista to Instructure Canvas

    UCF, which touts itself as the second largest public university in the United States (58,000 students, behind only Arizona State University), selected Canvas after a 6 month evaluation process that was triggered by the end-of-life notice for Vista. The full migration should be complete by the Spring 2013 term. The UCF evaluation process looked at three solutions in detail – Blackboard Learn 9.1, Desire2Learn Learning Suite and Instructure Canvas – comparing each to the existing Vista implementation.

    See information at the bottom of this post about the LMS selection website available from UCF.

    Sheridan College moves from Blackboard Vista to Desire2Learn Learning Suite

    Sheridan College, a Canadian “institution with over 17,000 full-time and 35,000 continuing education students”, recently selected Desire2Learn as their LMS provider, replacing Vista based on the product end-of-life. From the press release:

    Following an exhaustive internal consultation that involved a working committee of 40 members including managers, IT representatives, faculty support staff, faculty members, and student union representatives, Sheridan concluded that Desire2Learn Learning Suite most closely matched the college’s criteria. [snip]

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  • Why the Cisco Networking Academy Partnership with Instructure is Important for Education

    Per last week’s announcement:

    Cisco Networking Academy, which bills itself as the “world’s largest classroom” with over 1 million students in 165 countries, announced that the program has selected Instructure’s Canvas as its new LMS, replacing a homegrown system in use for over 15 years. The initial announcement was made at Instructure’s user conference, and a more formal announcement [was] made Monday [June 18] at the Cisco Networking Academy conference in California.

    This news appears to have generated some interest in technology circles (TechCrunch had the best article so far), but I have been surprised how little coverage the US education media has given this news. It almost feels like there is a concerted opinion that this news is mostly irrelevant to educational institutions, particularly to the higher education community. All I can find so far in national education media is one perfunctory quick take in Inside Higher Ed, one short piece cross-posted at T.H.E. Journal and Campus Technology, and absolutely nothing in the Chronicle.

    Really? Their silence speaks volumes, and I think this lack of interest in the announcement is a mistake. This Cisco / Instructure partnership is important for education for at least three reasons.

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  • Cisco Networking Academy Selects Canvas as New LMS to Replace Homegrown System

    It’s summertime, so the LMS news continues . . .

    Cisco Networking Academy, which bills itself as the “world’s largest classroom” with over 1 million students in 165 countries, announced that the program has selected Instructure’s Canvas as its new LMS, replacing a homegrown system in use for over 15 years. The initial announcement was made at Instructure’s user conference, and a more formal announcement will be made Monday at the Cisco Networking Academy conference in California.

    Cisco Networking Academy is the company’s “largest and longest running corporate social responsibility program”, meaning that there is no charge for public and non-profit institutions. Despite the program’s size, the nature of the Networking Academy is often misunderstood – is not a corporate training program, but rather an hardware-neutral educational program in partnership with over 10,000 High Schools and Higher Education institutions worldwide.

    Instructure also released their learning analytics option, as described by Audrey Watters.

    I’ll have more analysis on the announcements early next week.

  • Recent LMS Selections Hint at Continuing Market Changes

    Now that we’re in the middle of June – near the end of the fiscal year for many schools and leading up to user conferences for many LMS vendors – we are starting to see some significant LMS and learning platform announcements. While we typically have a surge in announcements this time of year, this year there are indications from the recent decisions on the continuing changes to the LMS market.

    San Jose State University selects Instructure Canvas to replace Desire2Learn

    According to this article from the student newspaper in February, initial indications were that SJSU might leave Desire2Learn for Moodle, primarily based on cost considerations.

    Students who have learned Desire2Learn, D2L, over the past three years may have to learn a new learning management system next fall.

    In the Academic Senate meeting on Feb. 13, Provost Ellen Junn announced that SJSU may be moving to a new system, called Moodle, after the spring semester.[snip]

    According to Provost Junn, SJSU’s contract with D2L cost $361,198.31 each year, while Fresno State spends about $75,000 on Moodle.

    “(The price) varies from institution to institution,” Junn said.  “The more students you have, the more (the learning management system’s) charge.”

    Update: Fresno State uses Blackboard, not Moodle, as their campus LMS, so direct comparison of costs does not make sense as reported. The relevant point is that cost was a driver for the SJSU re-evaluation.

    The task force mentioned in the article has now finished their work, and the decision was made to switch, not to Moodle but to Instructure’s Canvas LMS. In a letter to the campus last week, the provost notified of the decision.

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  • The Blackboard Announcements, Part 2: Can Open Source Be Bought?

    I have gotten a lot of email from folks who moved to Moodle (often from Blackboard CE) because they wanted to get away from Blackboard and they thought that open source was “safe.” In my first post on the announcements, I noted there are reasons to believe that Moodlerooms customers may do just fine under the new corporate ownership. But still, what does the announcement mean? Did Blackboard buy Moodle? What about open source can be for sale? What protection does it afford from corporate acquisition, and what are the limits of those protections?

    I’ll try to outline some of the ins and outs in this post.

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  • Summary of Statements by Key Players in Blackboard Announcement, Including Competitors

    Given all the news and discussion surrounding Blackboard’s strategy change last week, I thought that it would be useful to collect the public statements from Blackboard and their competitors in one place. No analysis, no interviews, just statements. I have a feeling that this might provide a rich source of analysis 6 – 12 months from now.

    Blackboard Official Announcements

    On March 26th, Blackboard made four simultaneous announcements through press release. They also released two additional press releases based on these four announcements.

    Blackboard / Moodlerooms / NetSpot / Moodle / Severance Key Blogs and Interviews

    Subsequently, several of the key players in the Blackboard announcements made statements through their own blogs or through media interviews. (more…)