Today Coursera announced their new round of fund raising, as reported at GigaOm: Just last year, online education startup Coursera raised $22 million in venture funding, but the Mountain View-based company is topping up its coffers once again. On Wednesday, the startup said it had raised $43 million in a Series B round of financing […]
LMS
LMS Market Update: May and June News
There have been a number of LMS and Learning Platform announcements over the past month or two that will help shape the market over the next year or more. One trend I’ve described is the transition from an LMS market to a Learning Platform market, which includes a broader scope of products. Below are some of […]
Blackboard Changes Underway: Jay Bhatt Interview and Management Changes
There is an interesting article today from Bill Flook , who has covered Blackboard as a business, including the story of Michael Chasen’s departure in late 2012 along with two rounds of layoffs. Blackboard Inc. has been a company in transition long before CEO Michael Chasen announced his upcoming departure. In fact, the presence of […]
Big 3 MOOC Providers Turning One Year Old
We are in the middle of the first anniversary of the creation of the big 3 MOOC providers (Coursera, Udacity, edX). Sebastian Thrun announced the creation of Udacity on January 23, 2012 as described by Reuters. Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng announced the creation of Coursera on April 18, 2012 in this NY Times article. […]
Snapshot of LMS Market for Large Online Programs in the US
The transformation of the higher education LMS market continues, and I expect more changes over the next 2 – 3 years. However, it seems time to capture a key segment of the market based on two recent announcements that directly impact large online programs. UMUC Selects Desire2Learn Following a multi-year strategic study and product selection, the […]
The Billion-Dollar Bet on an Adaptive Learning Platform
Update (2/15/13): Per Apollo Group, the billion-dollar investment mentioned in the Chronicle article (quoted below) refers to total infrastructure – not just the learning platform itself. The total infrastructure includes new CRM, portal, and administrative systems. ***** Earlier this week I wrote about the new patent awarded to the University of Phoenix (the for-profit institution […]
University of Phoenix Patents Adaptive Activity Stream for Its Learning Platform
The University of Phoenix recently was awarded a patent (#8341148 B1) for an adaptive activity stream related to its online learning platform. From an initial reading of the patent, it appears very broad to me (deja vu all over again). From the press release: Apollo Group (APOL), the parent company of University of Phoenix®, today […]