e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: LMS market

  • LoudCloud Systems Announces Adaptive LMS General Release

    One of the trends that I’ve been tracking in the LMS market is a move away from the monolithic, all-things-to-everyone enterprise LMS solution. There are several different approaches challenging this model, but the general theme is that the ed tech market needs more flexible, targeted approaches to directly support teaching and learning needs.

    The news today is that LoudCloud Systems is officially announcing their LMS solution’s entry into the general higher education and K-12 markets as described in a Campus Technology article. In this announcement, LoudCloud promises what they describe as the “first fully adaptive and configurable Learning Management Systems for Higher Education and K12”. While I cannot judge yet how successful this vendor will be with their strategy, I think the announcement is significant for the LMS market for two reasons.

    • LoudCloud appears to be providing the first disaggregated LMS on the commercial market; and
    • The system has an integrated analytics engine that supports personalized content delivery.

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  • Farewell to the Enterprise LMS, Greetings to the Learning Platform

    Along with others, I have written several times over the past 12 months here, here, here and here about the significant changes occurring in the educational LMS market. In my opinion, when we look back on market changes, 2011 will stand out as the year when the LMS market passed the point of no return and changed forever. What we are now seeing are some real signs of what the future market will look like, and the actual definition of the market is changing. We are going from an enterprise LMS market to a learning platform market.

    What I mean by ‘enterprise LMS’ is the legacy model of the LMS as a smaller, academically-facing version of the ERP. This model was based on monolithic, full-featured software systems that could be hosted on-site or by a managed hosting provider. A ‘learning platform’, by contrast, does not contain all the features in itself and is based on cloud computing – multi-tenant, software as a service (SaaS).

    The 2011 EDUCAUSE event captured the zeitgeist of the changes, as it seemed most of the buzz at the conference centered on new LMS solutions and paradigm changes. Instructure made their debut at the conference, Pearson’s OpenClass was announced, Blackboard announced a new move in open content focused on CourseSites, and Cengage demonstrated their MindTap platform. Rather than slowing since EDUCAUSE, we have seen several additional announcements in the past three months.

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  • Brown University moving from Blackboard to Instructure’s Canvas LMS

    This is a guest post by Phil Hill from Delta Initiative, follow on Twitter  @PhilOnEdTech or his blog

    Brown University announced today that they will be moving from MyCourses, which is their branded version of Blackboard Campus Edition (formerly WebCT), to Instructure’s Canvas LMS.  They have already been piloting the Instructure system, and plan to fully move into the new system by Spring 2013.  The Computing and Information Services (CIS), aided by the Academic Technology Steering Committee, started the move to replace MyCourses after Blackboard announced it would end support for Campus Edition by October 2012.  Brown University had been on the WebCT / Blackboard system since 2002.

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  • Role of Educational Technology in Enabling Higher Ed Change

    This is a guest post by Phil Hill from Delta Initiative, follow on Twitter  @PhilOnEdTech or his blog

    Over the weekend, and over the big pond, Music for Deckchairs had two interesting posts that called me out for perhaps being too optimistic on the transformation of LMS markets.  The two posts referenced my recent posts on New Mentality Entering LMS Market and 3 Surprising LMS Market Observations, although I suspect they might indirectly reference Michael Feldstein’s posts support the same proposition – namely that the LMS market specifically, and ed tech market generally, is changing in significant ways that are going to have a big impact on higher education.  Both posts from Music for Deckchairs are important reads. (more…)