e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: LMS

  • Back To The Future: Looking at LMS forecasts from 2011 – 2014

    At today’s Learning Analytics and Knowledge 2015 conference (#LAK15), Charles Severance (aka Dr. Chuck) gave the morning keynote organized around the theme of going back in time to see what people (myself and Richard Katz primarily) were forecasting for education. By looking at the reality of 2015, we can see which forecasts were on track and which were not. I like this concept, as it is useful to go back and see what we got right and wrong, so this post is meant to provide some additional context particularly for LMS market. Chuck’s keynote also gives cover for doing so without seeming too self-absorbed.

    But enough about me. What do you think about me?

    I use the term forecast since I tend to describe patterns and trends and then try to describe the implications. This is different than the Katz video which aimed to make specific predictions as a thought-provoking device.

    Pre-2011

    I introduced the LMS squid diagram in 2008 as a tool to help people see the LMS market holistically rather than focusing on detailed features. Too much of campus evaluations then (and even now) missed the big picture that there were only a handful of vendors and some significant market dynamics at play.

    A 2009 presentation, by the way, was the basis for Michael and me connecting for the first time. Bromance. (more…)

  • Slides and Follow-up From Faculty Development Workshop at Aurora University

    Today I facilitated a faculty development workshop at Aurora University, sponsored by the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and the IT Department. I always enjoy sessions like this, particularly with the ability to focus our discussions squarely on technology in support of teaching and learning. The session was titled “Emerging Trends in Educational Technology and Implications for Faculty”. Below are very rough notes, slides, and a follow-up.

    Apparent Dilemma and Challenge

    Building off of previous presentations at ITC Network, there is an apparent dilemma:

    • One one hand, little has changed: Despite all the hype and investment in ed tech, there is only one new fully-established LMS vendor in the past decade (Canvas), and the top uses of LMS are for course management (rosters, content sharing, grades). Plus the MOOC movement fizzled out, at least for replacing higher ed programs or courses.
    • On the other hand, everything has changed: There are examples of redesigned courses such as Habitable Worlds at ASU that are showing dramatic results in the depth of learning by students.

    The best lens to understand this dilemma is Everett Rogers’ Diffusions of Innovations and the technology adoption curve and categories. Geoffrey Moore extended this work to call out a chasm between Innovators / Early Adopters on the left side (wanting advanced tech, OK with partial solutions they cobble together, pushing the boundary) and Majority / Laggards on the right side (wanting full solution – just make it work, make it reliable, make it intuitive). Whereas Moore described Crossing the Chasm for technology companies (moving from one side to the other), in most cases in education we don’t have that choice. The challenge in education is Straddling the Chasm (a concept I’m developing with a couple of consulting clients as well as observations from e-Literate TV case studies): (more…)

  • Editorial Policy: Notes on recent reviews of CBE learning platforms

    Oh let the sun beat down upon my face, stars to fill my dream
    I am a traveler of both time and space, to be where I have been
    To sit with elders of the gentle race, this world has seldom seen
    They talk of days for which they sit and wait and all will be revealed

    – R Plant, Kashmir

    Over the past half year or so I’ve provided more in-depth product reviews of several learning platforms than is typical – Helix, FlatWorld, LoudCloud, Bridge. Understanding that at e-Literate we are not a review site nor do we tend to analyze technology for technology’s sake, it’s worth asking ‘why the change?’. There has been a lot of worthwhile discussion in several blogs recently about whether the LMS is obsolete or critical to the future of higher ed, and this discussion even raised the subject of how we got to the current situation in the first place.

    An interesting development I’ve observed is that the learning environment of the future might already be emerging on its own, but not necessarily coming from the institution-wide LMS market. Canvas, for all its market-changing power, is almost a half decade old. The area of competency-based education (CBE), with its hundreds of pilot programs, appears to be generating a new generation of learning platforms that are designed around the learner (rather than the course) and around learning (or at least the proxy of competency frameworks). It seems useful to get a more direct look at these platforms to understand the future of the market and to understand that the next generation environment is not necessarily a concept yet to be designed.

    (more…)

  • LoudCloud Systems and FASTRAK: A non walled-garden approach to CBE

    As competency-based education (CBE) becomes more and more important to US higher education, it would be worth exploring the learning platforms in use. While there are cases of institutions using their traditional LMS to support a CBE program, there is a new market developing specifically around learning platforms that are designed specifically for self-paced, fully-online, competency-framework based approaches.

    Recently I saw a demo of the new CBE platform from LoudCloud Systems, a company whose traditional LMS I have covered a few years ago. The company is somewhat confusing to me – I had expected a far larger market impact from them based on their product design than what has happened in reality. LoudCloud has recently entered the CBE market, not by adding features to their core LMS but by creating a new product called FASTRAK. Like Instructure with their creation of a new LMS for a different market (corporate learning), LoudCloud determined that CBE called for a new design and that the company can handle two platforms for two mostly distinct markets. In the case of Bridge and FASTRAK, I believe the creation of a new learning platform took approximately one year (thanks a lot, Amazon). LoudCloud did leverage several of the traditional LMS tools such as rubrics, discussion forums and their LoudBook interactive eReader.

    As was the case for the description of the Helix CBE-based learning platform and the description of FlatWorld’s learning platform, my interest here is not merely to review one company’s products, but rather to illustrate aspects of the growing CBE movement using the demo.

    LoudCloud’s premier CBE partner is the University of Florida’s Lastinger Center, a part of the College of Education that provides professional development for Florida’s 55,000 early learning teachers. They have or expect to have more than a dozen pilot programs for CBE in place during the first half of 2015. (more…)

  • First View of Bridge: The new corporate LMS from Instructure

    Last week I covered the announcement from Instructure that they had raised another $40 million in venture funding and were expanding into the corporate learning market. Today I was able to see a demo of their new corporate LMS, Bridge. While Instructure has very deliberately designed a separate product from Canvas, their education-focused LMS, you can see the same philosophy of market strategy and product design embedded in the new system. In a nutshell, Bridge is designed to a simple, intuitive platform that moves control of the learning design away from central HR or IT control and closer to the end user.

    While our primary focus at e-Literate is on higher ed and even some K-12 learning, the development of professional development and corporate training markets are becoming more important even in the higher ed context. At the least, this is important for those who are tracking Instructure and how their company plans might affect the future of education platforms.

    The core message of Instructure regarding Bridge – just as with Canvas – is that it is focused on ease-of-use whereas the entrenched competition has fallen prey to feature bloat based on the edge cases. Despite this claim and despite Instructure’s track record with Canvas, what does this mean? I’m pretty sure every vendor out there claims ease-of-use whether or not there are elegant or terrible designs ((Although I would love to see the honest ad: “With a horrible, bloated user interface based on your 300-item RFP checklist!”)).

    Based on the demo, Bridge appears to define ease-of-use in three distinct areas – streamlined, clutter-free interface for learners, simple tools for content creation by business units, and simple tools for managing learners and content. (more…)

  • What TechCrunch Got Wrong (and Right) About Instructure Entering Corporate Learning Market

    After yesterday’s “sources say” report from TechCrunch about Instructure – maker of the Canvas LMS – raising a new round of financing and entering the corporate LMS space, Instructure changed plans and made their official announcement to today. The funding is to both expand the Canvas team and to establish the new corporate LMS team. I’m not a fan of media attempts to get a scoop based purely on rumors, and in this case TechCrunch got a few items wrong that are worth correcting.

    • Instructure raised $40 million in new financing (series E), not “between $50 to $70 million”. TechCrunch did hedge their bets with “low end of the range at over $40 million”.
    • The primary competition in the corporate LMS space is Saba, SumTotal, Skillsoft, Cornerstone – and not Blackboard.
    • The Canvas LMS was launched in 2010, not 2011. (OK, I’ll give them this one, as even Instructure seems to use the 2011 date).

    TechCrunch did get the overall story of fund-raising and new corporate product right, but these details matter.

    Instructure’s new product for the corporate learning market is called Bridge, with its web site here. This is an entirely new product, although it does share a similar product architecture as Canvas, the LMS designed for the education market (including being based on Ruby on Rails). Unlike Canvas, Bridge was designed mobile-first, with all mobile capabilities embedded in the product and not as separate applications. In an interview with Josh Coates, CEO of Instructure, he described their motivation for this new product.

    We like the idea of building software that helps people get smarter. Post education there is a void, with bad corporate software.

    (more…)

  • California Community College OEI Selects LMS Vendor

    The Online Education Initiative (OEI) for California’s Community College System has just announced its vendor selection for a Common Course Management System (CCMS) ((Note that this is an Intent to Award, not yet a contract.)). For various reasons I cannot provide any commentary on this process, so I would prefer to simply direct people to the OEI blog site. Update: To answer some questions, the reason I cannot comment is that CCC is a MindWires client, and I facilitated the meetings. Based on this relationship we have a non-disclosure agreement with OEI.

    Here is the full announcement.

    The California Community Colleges (CCC) Online Education Initiative (OEI) announced its intent to award Instructure Inc. the contract to provide an online course management system and related services to community colleges statewide.

    Support for Instructure’s Canvas system was nearly unanimous among the OEI’s Common Course Management System (CCMS) Committee members, with overwhelming support from student participants, officials said. Canvas is a course management platform that is currently being used by more than 1,000 colleges, universities and school districts across the country.

    “Both the students and faculty members involved believed that students would be most successful using the Canvas system,” said OEI Statewide Program Director Steve Klein. “The student success element was a consistent focus throughout.”

    The announcement includes some information on the process as well. (more…)