Digital Directions - Spring/Summer 2012 - (Page 36)

document cataloging the LMS industry, Blackboard, as a nearly universally accepted leader in the field, can single-handedly shift its direction. “The reality is that they dominate the whole sector,” McIntosh says. Most observers appear to agree with McIntosh’s assessment, but some wonder whether that influence is a progressive force or one that is simply good for business. Garn, for one, points to previous acquisitions made by Blackboard as hindering evolution in the industry because reorganization efforts diverted attention from product development. In June 2010, Blackboard acquired the synchronous-onlinelearning companies Elluminate and Wimba after purchasing the educational software company ANGEL Inc. just over a year earlier. “I’ve been working with companies for 10 to 12 years now, and every two to three years one of them gets acquired by Blackboard,” says Garn. “The churning of the learning management systems and the LMS situation is a drag on productivity for the institutions, colleges, and the schools.” Brett Frazier, the senior vice president of Blackboard Learn, the company’s primary LMS offering, disagrees. He says the inclusion of new open-source options under the Blackboard umbrella will help schools that, in tight budgetary times, are trying to figure out how best to utilize the technology they have to create opportunities for online and blended learning. “School districts have a lot of stuff they have purchased over the past few years,” Frazier says. “To us right now, it’s actually about how you use the stuff you have or how you are wise with what little funds you have.” + LMS Providers ANGEL Learning www.angellearning.com Blackboard Learn Desire2Learn Learning Suite www.blackboard.com www.desire2learn.com Education Elements Hybrid Learning Management System www.edelements.com Follett Software Destiny www.follettsoftware.com Global Scholar Pinnacle Suite www.globalscholar.com Instructure Canvas www.instructure.com iversity www.iversity.org Moodle http://moodle.org Catalysts for Change? Others say that while the acquisition may help Blackboard, Moodlerooms, and NetSpot become more flexible in satisfying immediate demands from schools, a more dramatic shift in the nature of the learning-management system will likely come from a different company. Edward Mansouri, the president of Ucompass, a Tallahassee, Fla.-based LMS provider, says he believes his company has a chance to be that catalyst. At an invitation-only event at the Virtual Pearson OpenClass PLATO Learning Environment www.plato.com www.joinopenclass.com Time to Know Digital Learning Platform www.timetoknow.com www.ucompass.com Ucompass Educator School Symposium in Indianapolis last November, Mansouri unveiled the company’s Octane product, which essentially aims to restructure the relationship between course administration and content delivery. Basically, Octane gives users the option of writing individual tools into their content that are typically found within an LMS, such as phone directories, instant-messaging applications, social-networking functions, webinar-hosting tools, and studentperformance-measuring instruments, Mansouri says. Unlike with an LMS, Octane users need only write in the tools that they find necessary, since they are hosted remotely instead of within LMS software. “The mechanics of being able to have the focus just on the functionality needed, … that, in and of itself, is a huge benefit because you’re minimizing clicks, cognitive overhead, [and] technical overhead,” says Mansouri, who acknowledges that the new product is a departure from Ucompass’ previous work in the LMS sector. “We got pretty wrapped up in what we thought was good functionality and what we thought was useful, but it seemed there was a pattern of what people expected to be able to do,” he adds. The 122,000-student Florida Virtual School, based in Orlando, has for years partnered with Ucompass, and now has gradually implemented some Octane tools in its courses. As of March, the school has included a tool that allows students to rate the effectiveness of pieces of content in all but seven of its course offerings—a rating that could be used by teachers to determine future instruction. Although the Florida Virtual School has been slower to integrate other features into its content, its senior manager of product development, Jennifer Whiting, says she believes the tool, which is built on coding abilities that have existed for at least five years, will transform the LMS field. “I think Ucompass has a handle on how to take ideas out in the marketplace and turn them into a product that can just revolutionize things,” Whiting says. “You could say, ‘Why didn’t anyone think of the iPhone before?’ ” Whiting adds, comparing the watershed Apple mobile phone to Octane. “It’s that kind of innovation. It’s that kind of leap.” ■ 36 >> www.digitaldirections.org  http://www.angellearning.com http://www.blackboard.com http://www.desire2learn.com http://www.edelements.com http://www.follettsoftware.com http://www.globalscholar.com http://www.instructure.com http://www.iversity.org http://www.moodle.org http://www.joinopenclass.com http://www.plato.com http://www.timetoknow.com http://www.ucompass.com http://www.digitaldirections.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Digital Directions - Spring/Summer 2012

Digital Directions - Spring/Summer 2012
Contents
Editor's Note
DD Site Visit
Bits & Bytes
Game On
Applicable Knowledge
Digital Badges
Lessons From Higher Education
Competitive Edge
Recognizing Online PD
Ready or Not
Q&A
Opinion
Data Delivery

Digital Directions - Spring/Summer 2012

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