e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: Mark Drechsler

  • LMS Observations: You had me until you went nihilist

    Mark Drechsler has a fascinating post in response to my recent LMS as minivan about D2L’s retention claims, mostly playing off of this theme:

    I answered another question by saying that the LMS, with multiple billions invested over 17+ years, has not “moved the needle” on improving educational results. I see the value in providing a necessary academic infrastructure that can enable real gains in select programs or with new tools (e.g. adaptive software for remedial math, competency-based education for working adults), but the best the LMS itself can do is get out of the way – do its job quietly, freeing up faculty time, giving students anytime access to course materials and feedback. In aggregate, I have not seen real academic improvements directly tied to the LMS.

    In response, Mark gives “a personal view of my own journey towards LMS nihilism” in a post titled “How I lost my faith in the LMS” that has some excellent points (first go read his whole post, I’ll wait).

    Mark Nihilist.001

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  • Blackboard Brain Drain: One third of executive team leaves in past 3 months

    In August 2013 Michael described Ray Henderson’s departure from an operational role at Blackboard. As of the end of 2014, Ray is no longer on the board of directors at Blackboard either. He is focusing on his board activity (including In The Telling, our partner for e-Literate TV) and helping with other ed tech companies. While Ray’s departure from the board did not come as a surprise to me, I have been noting the surprising number of other high-level departures from Blackboard recently.

    As of December 24, 2014, Blackboard listed 12 company executives in their About > Leadership page. Of those 12 people, 4 have left the company since early January. Below is the list of the leadership team at that time along with notes on changes:

    • Jay Bhatt, CEO
    • Maurice Heiblum, SVP Higher Education, Corporate And Government Markets (DEPARTED February, new job unlisted)
    • Mark Belles, SVP K-12 (DEPARTED March, now President & COO at Teaching Strategies, LLC)
    • David Marr, SVP Transact
    • Matthew Small, SVP & Managing Director, International
    • Gary Lang, SVP Product Development, Support And Cloud Services (DEPARTED January, now VP B2B Technology, Amazon Supply)
    • Katie Blot, SVP Educational Services (now SVP Corporate Strategy & Business Development)
    • Mark Strassman, SVP Industry and Product Management
    • Bill Davis, CFO
    • Michael Bisignano, SVP General Counsel, Secretary (DEPARTED February, now EVP & General Counsel at CA Technologies)
    • Denise Haselhorst, SVP Human Resources
    • Tracey Stout, SVP Marketing

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