Quick Thoughts on Pearson's New Free OpenClass LMS

We have known for a few years that the LMS market "is shifting". Thanks to the excellent work done by groups like Delta Initiative and the Campus Computing Project, our collective eyes have been lifted up beyond our own campus to see what is happening around us.

Today, articles in the Chronicle (here) and Inside Higher Ed (here) relayed information about OpenClass, a free cloud-based LMS service (currently in beta) from Pearson in partnership with Google.

As of the writing of this post, no information is yet available via Pearson. My knowledge of the product is limited to coverage in the previously mentioned articles and my participation in a private demo of Pearson's precursor "Project Berlin" a few months ago.

(Updates: Adrian Sannier tweeted a link to a "teaser site" for OpenClass: http://www.joinopenclass.com/open/view/t1. Also, Campus Technology reveals many features of OpenClass in an interview with Pearson's Katy Kappler.)

Regarding OpenClass, I found a few interesting aspects to this new product:

Social networking & modern interfaces
Obviously any new learning platform must leverage social networking features and modern communication vehicles such as robust messaging, in addition to an improved modern interface (a strength of Instructure's Canvas LMS). Traditional LMS products are playing catch-up in these areas. OpenClass seems to place a high priority on activity streams and communication notifications. OpenClass also has some integration points with Google Apps (Calendar, Docs, and later, widgets).

Pearson's "Learning Exchange"
During the "Project Berlin" demo, Pearson reps discussed LMS integration with their forthcoming "Learning Exchange", Pearson's digital content marketplace. Learning Exchange was demonstrated as a separate system where instructors can share curriculum, content and communications while discovering other resources (cost and no-cost). Pearson also mentioned that they were talking with Merlot and other OER providers as a way of providing more learning content directly to students at no cost.

The extent to which faculty will a) find useful and relevant resources, as well as b) share out their materials and ideas certainly remains to be seen.

Leadership of Adrian Sannier at Pearson
Adrian Sannier, VP of Product at Pearson, brings a wealth of academic experience as former University Technology Officer at Arizona State (where he led the first massive higher ed conversion to Gmail) and previously as a member of the faculty at Iowa State. I will be very interested to monitor the acceleration of Pearson in the non-profit higher education market and also Pearson's LMS trajectory.

Emergence of another "instructor-choice" option
Will universities' LMS landscape evolve into a hybrid model that might include a primary centrally managed/supported LMS, secondary "niche" LMS's for specific disciplines or programs, and now instructor-choice options like OpenClass and Blackboard's free CourseSites? It is likely that instructors will increasingly be tempted to adopt learning environments provided by the publishers of their course textbooks. How will this diverse LMS landscape impact students and their desire for convenience? Where will expectations be set for university support staff?

Today's news from Pearson is just one more tremor in the current landscape shift that is occurring.

What do you think is most significant about this news from Pearson and Google? I'm quite curious to hear your thoughts and questions.

I am excited for students and instructors that their experiences with learning environments are improving -- even if that means difficult work for those of us leading and supporting the change.

Notes from "What's New in Digital Learning Environments" webinar

On June 28, 2011, the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) hosted presentations by Michael Feldstein (Cengage Learning) and Niall Sclater (Open University) in a webinar, "What's New in Digital Learning Environments".

I was hoping to learn more about Michael's work on the MindTap product and hear for the first time from Niall who is very well-respected in the higher ed LMS/VLE community. Turns out they didn't disappoint.

I jotted the following notes which I thought would be of interest to many. I apologize for the brevity. Please, if you have questions or comments, just post them below.

Niall's presentation discussed some future directions for the LMS/VLE.

The future is:

1. Interactive - This includes more advanced quizzing technologies that provide feedback and options for adaptive learning.
2. Mobile - Users will demand unfettered access to LMS on mobile devices and tablets. Niall said that a student "should be able to do a whole degree" via mobile device. eBooks and eReaders will continue to be important. eBooks are different than basic PDFs of articles, chapters, or books in that the student owns the book and likely views and treats it differently than an ephemeral document such as those we so frequently use online.
3. Social - How will learning environments interact with Facebook? Should these systems even interact with Facebook at all? A survey of Open University students revealed that more than 50% reject Facebook use for their studies. (~30% accept.) Privacy is the biggest concern; students also want to separate their personal and academic worlds. Niall also pointed out a number of other online tools such as iSpot where learners can participate socially online for specific learning activities (without integrating with Facebook).
4. Personal - Learners will likely want to continue to construct their own environments through tools like iGoogle. Learning environments should evolve so that they "push out bits" of the LMS for external consumption (example: course calendar, course news, other notifications). Niall thinks students would prefer to construct their own dashboard rather than use their institution's system (similar to how most of us use the Twitter service and not the Twitter web site).

Michael Feldstein, Cengage Learning, discussed the future of MindTap. MindTap is not a new LMS, rather it is a unique way to deliver content and learning activities. If I heard Michael correctly, he called MindTap "a meBook wrapped in a weReader".

He noted that the future of eBooks looks bright. In 2011 Kindle sales have surpassed paper books on Amazon.

MindTap:

• Is a single purpose system (learning content that is personalizable, social)
• Bidirectional with rest of Internet
• Allows for the construction of "Learning Paths" (similar to table of contents), Units (chapters), and Learning Activities (readings, quizzes, flash cards)
• Learning Path is not just navigation, but architecture; it allows a path to be constructed through some (but not nec. all) content; multiple Paths can be created for different groups or needs (cram session, remedial, or even personal)
• The architecture is built so that future analytics can be built and leveraged
• Interface: focused on doing one thing at a time well which works very well in a "post-PC world" where screen space is limited; device agnostic HTML5 eReader

MindTap's Features:

• ability to highlight text
• notepad
• text-to-voice
• integration with other services (Google Translate, Docs, blog service, perhaps EverNote, etc.)
• discussions that can be added to the exact spot where you need it (back end integration with LMS)
• Gradebook? No comprehensive gradebook (never will be); MindTap collects data on what/how students are learning; will eventually pass scores back to LMS gradebook
• Basic LTI for AuthNZ

MindTap's relation to LMS:

• Pulls aspects of LMS into MindTap…you only go to LMS for big picture management of resources
• Kind of like Twitter…we use the service in a multitude of interfaces

I asked Michael how we (university IT) might first see MindTap appear on the radar of faculty. He said faculty might be exposed to MindTap when they make textbook purchasing decisions. He also added that Cengage would, obviously, love to discuss institutional approaches to leveraging MindTap. He also reiterated that the LMS landscape is in flux and is likely to change over the next few years.

Overall, I appreciated this well-coordinated webinar (thanks ALT). Niall and Michael confirmed many of the assumptions my institution has been making regarding the future of our learning systems.

It's an exciting field in which to work and learn, and I'm optimistic that the challenges we will be facing in the very near future will lead to some very interesting opportunities for students and instructors.

--
Citation:
Sclater, Niall and Feldstein, Michael (2011) What's New in Digital Learning Environments webinar recording (made in Elluminate). In: ALT/ELN webinar: What's New in Digital Learning Environments, 28 June 2011.

Growth of Non-Blackboard LMS Options

Michael Feldstein has provided a very interesting analysis of the current LMS market in the U.S.:

The Evolving LMS Market, Part I
December 21, 2010

Using data from the Campus Computing Project, Feldstein illustrates how it likely is a myth to frame the LMS landscape discussion as "Blackboard vs. Open Source". The growth of not only Moodle and Sakai -- but also Desire2Learn -- signifies a measurable movement away from the Blackboard conglomerate (Bb, WebCT, and ANGEL).

I'm struck by a number of points

• Desire2Learn and Moodle have made huge gains in the U.S. market and specifically within a few market segments.
• Blackboard's share is slipping significantly.
• Sakai's growth among public research institutions is worth following.

Here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, we are using Desire2Learn as our centrally supported course management system. However, Moodle has been implemented in many of our schools and colleges for various reasons and we are collectively considering the future of Moodle on our campus.

After reading Michael's post and seeing the trends among public research universities, my fear is that my colleagues and I might be overly distracted by the emergence of Moodle and not focused enough on Sakai.

UPDATE: Recently, Delta Initiative stated that an archive of their 12/16/2010 webinar "New Choices. The State of Learning Management in Higher Education Systems" will be posted online within 10 days of the event. It will be very interesting to compare their findings with those of the Campus Computing Project and Michael Feldstein. Stay tuned.

Unanswered questions raised for D2L

Like Barry Dahl, I too will not be attending next week's Desire2Learn users conference in Chicago. My reasons were more run-of-the mill: family time and coaching duties primarily.

In his latest blog post, Barry takes a principled stand (I suppose mine is based on principles too) and is actually boycotting the conference.

I appreciate the issues and questions Barry raises about D2L and their handling of the last (latest?) chapter in the Blackboard-D2L edupatent saga. He speaks for all of us when we ask collectively, WHAT THE HECK D2L?? I think we have all gone on our merry ways tending to the daily fires and to our local projects and have set aside our nagging curiosity stake in the issues.

I do hope that those attending the conference receive some answers to these questions.

If I were to attend the D2L conference, I would also like to ask a question related to the release of Learning Environment 9.0 that my institution launched this week. "Why didn't you do more to better accommodate the transition of the navigation bars to .NET?" Custom links, customized tool names, and many graphical elements have been hosed by the upgrade.

By not attending the conference, I will certainly miss the UNconference and the hallway conversations with D2L staff and peers from around the world. My biggest regret is missing a great chance to connect with 7 faculty from the University of Wisconsin-Madison who are attending for the first time. For those attending, if you see them in your sessions or at lunch, do make them feel welcome!

Blackboard's Patent is Down to its Last 30 Days

Last week, Ray Mosteller revived the discussion of the Blackboard-Desire2Learn saga by articulating a number of questions pertaining to the settlement between Blackboard and D2L. One of Ray's questions caught my attention. He wrote, "What ever happened to the USPTO rejection of all claims in the Blackboard ‘138 (Alcorn) patent? Or the USPTO re-examination of the ‘138 patent. Is this still ongoing? Is there a chance that the USPTO could revive the ‘138 patent?"

Last we heard, the US Patent and Trademark Office was re-examining the patent and had issued a series of "non-final" decisions that invalidated all 44 (then later all 57) of Blackboard's claims related to the '138 (aka Alcorn) patent. I assumed that Blackboard had appealed that decision, but I cannot find evidence of that.

My attempt to uncover the current status of the patent re-examination led me to the attorney, Michael Spiegel, representing the Software Freedom Law Center and its ex parte re-examination request with the USPTO. Spiegel graciously informed me that a final Right of Appeal Notice has been sent to Blackboard regarding their last opportunity to appeal the USPTOs decision to overturn all claims in the '138 Alcorn patent. Blackboard has 30 days from March 12 2010 to file their appeal. If they do not, then the re-examination is complete and the USPTO decision is mercifully declared final.

In reviewing the publicly available Right of Appeal Notice, this statement by the USPTO nicely summarizes the nature of this infamous patent:

"The claimed invention is merely a combination of old elements...The combination is an adaptation of an old idea using newer technology that is commonly available and understood in the art and thus obvious."

Note: I've posted the USPTO's Right of Appeal Notice here (PDF, 1.3 MB). The document contains a record of all the arguments made regarding the existence of prior art to invalidate Blackboard's claims.

Update:
Many thanks are also owed to SFLC's former patent attorney Richard Fontana who "did all the heavy lifting in this case", according to Spiegel.

Jon Mott: Bridging the Gap Between the PLE and the LMS

Back in August 2009, Jon Mott gave this presentation at OpenEd 2009. He reports on their work at BYU to create a new learning environment based on PLE principles.

I strongly encourage anyone interested in the future of the CMS/LMS to watch this presentation. I took away the following points:

1. PLE values (student-centric, openness) more closely match the values of the institution than do the values of the CMS

2. Lack of continuity for the learners from semester to semester exists in the current CMS. We typically turn off access to course sites at the end of the course. It’s the “chief demerit of the course management system” Mott says.

3. Stand-alone gradebook. This is a highly important progression in the future of the course management system. Integration with various systems will be key, but de-coupling this critical tool is the first step.

4. Get rid of the dropbox? He says that instructors can now tell students, “Don’t upload your paper, just give me the URL for where your paper lives on the web”. Furthermore, he says, "Maybe one of the requirements for being digitally literate in 2009 is being able to publish a web viewable document”. Bingo. How many institutions offer easy ways for students to publish on the web? However, I do know that many instructors value the ability to zip and download all the submitted papers for an assignment in order to more efficiently read and grade (likely after printing!) — something the digital dropbox currently offers.

Good stuff! I’ll be following Jon Mott and his work at BYU more closely these days. Some of my colleagues saw him speak at ELI 2010 recently and posted their summary and comments here.

"Live" updating of active Desire2Learn course sites

Thanks to a great idea from Alan Levine (aka CogDogBlog), here is a live look at the number of Learn@UW/Desire2Learn course sites activated for this fall semester:



This is a chart published from a Google spreadsheet. I'll be updating the spreadsheet periodically and this chart should dynamically reflect the changes I make. Very cool.