e-Literate

IMS Learning Information Services: The State of the Union

Michael Feldstein — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:10:59 +0000

Regular e-Literate readers know that I am a big booster of the IMS Learning Information Services specification. (For an overview of the basics of the specification, see my posts here, here, and here.) There has been a lot of news recently about adoption, and I thought it would be worthwhile to pull together a unified post of who is doing what. I’m going to divide vendors and projects into a few different categories based on their released code, public commitments, etc.

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Read the rest of IMS Learning Information Services: The State of the Union (589 words)

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Post tags: Blackboard-Inc., Datatel, Desire2Learn, Inigral, Jenzabar, Kuali Student, LearningStudio, Moodle, Moodlerooms, MyLabs, Oracle-Corporation, Pearson, Peoplesoft Campus Solutions, rSmart, SAIP, Sakai, Sungard, Unicon

Pearson Announces Support for IMS Learning Information Services

Michael Feldstein — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:24:38 +0000

Pearson just announced that they will be supporting the IMS LIS standard (and with Oracle’s SAIP implementation of it) across a number of their products. First, they’ll support it in MyLabs, which are subject-focused learning environments (e.g., MyChemLab, MyMathLab, etc.)—sort of a fusion between an online textbook and a lightweight LMS. This kind of provisioning cuts out the middle man of the full LMS. (Up until now, the course roster information would typically be provisioned to the LMS, and the LMS would then provision it to MyLabs.)

Pearson will also be supporting LIS integration for their newly announced LearningStudio product, which is a fusion of their eCollege and Fronter acquisitions. I haven’t seen LearningStudio yet, but I have seen Fronter, and I was seriously impressed. It may just be the most powerful and flexible LMS on the market today. It has been focused on the K12 (European) market up until now, but I saw nothing that would prevent it from working well in higher education as well.

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Post tags: eCollege, eCollege and Fronter, IMS, LearningStudio, LIS, Oracle-Corporation, Pearson-PLC

Desire2Learn Delivers IMS Basic Learning Tools Interoperability (BLTI) Support

Michael Feldstein — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:39:29 +0000

In other IMS news, Desire2Learn has announced that they are the first LMS provider to support BLTI, a specification designed to support plugging third-party tools into an LMS. According to the press release, here’s what’s included:

Management interfaces to define integrations to external learning tools (Tool Providers) and to create links
New Quicklink type to allow links to Tool Providers to be easily incorporated throughout Desire2Learn courses
Links to external learning tools that can send user, organization, and course context information for a personalized experience in the tool; single-sign-on to learning tools is supported through an oAuth framework using a key/secret shared between the external learning tool and the configured link in Learning Environment
Management tools to configure mapping from Desire2Learn roles to IMS roles, and from Desire2Learn org unit types to IMS context types

A couple of other platforms are following D2L on this road.

Sakai has a pre-alpha version which is publicly available for testing, and which has been proposed for eventual inclusion in the next Sakai release (2.7).
A prototype third-party building block is available for Blackboard through OSCELOT.

This is just the work that’s visible to the public. As is often the case with these things, (a) more work is going on behind the scenes, but (b) you should demand to see working code and a commitment to a supported release within a defined time frame before taking any statements of support by a vendor or project too seriously.

Kudos to Desire2Learn for taking the lead here.

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Post tags: Blackboard-Inc., Desire2Learn, IMS, LTI, Sakai

Jenzibar Planning to Support IMS Learning Information Services Standard

Michael Feldstein — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:55:04 +0000

I mentioned here recently that SunGard has committed to supporting IMS Learning Information Services in their next release, making them the second major SIS provider to do so. (Oracle, my employer, has supported it in Peoplesoft Campus Solutions for about a year now.) There’s a press release out from the IMS confirming this now, and also bringing the exciting news that Jenzabar “has also joined SunGard Higher Education and Oracle to support the LIS standard.” Also according to the press release, “Support from these three organizations means that LIS will be supported by suppliers that collectively comprise about two-thirds of the vendor-based, higher education student systems market in North America.”

Now, the Jenzabar announcement is news to me. I’m not sure if they’ve attended any working group meetings yet, and I’m also not sure if they’ve made a commitment to supporting LIS in a particular release yet. Still, this is another really solid step forward for the standard.

There are more LIS announcements to come, too.

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Post tags: IMS, LIS, Oracle-Corporation, Peoplesoft Campus Solutions, SAIP, Sungard

Understanding Single Sign-On

Michael Feldstein — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:48:00 +0000

This is a little geeky, but if you’ve ever wondered what “single sign-on” really means in the enterprise space, Unicon’s Andrew Petro has a great ten-minute YouTube video explaining the concepts, specifically as they are implemented in Jasig’s Central Authentication Service (CAS):

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Post tags: Andrew Petro, Authentication, Central Authentication Service, Identity management systems, Jasig, Single sign-on, Unicon

Fair Enough

Michael Feldstein — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:39:53 +0000

I received the following email from George Kroner, a developer who works for Blackboard:

I wanted to point out one issue I take with your recent blog post. OSCELOT, the open source organization that you mention, is not maintained by Blackboard. Rather, OSCELOT is a separate, independent organization that was founded by a number of Blackboard clients and now hosts 300 developers who contribute to over 100 different open source educational tools. Specifically, their mission is to support the creation of interoperable learning tools that span multiple platforms. Yes, it is true that we sometimes sponsor their events – just like we sponsor the events of a number of other organizations. Yes, it is true that a lot of the tools they have to offer plug into Blackboard’s LMSs, but this is due to the history of the organization. Every organization has to start somewhere. You’ll notice some tools are actually webapps or binary executables that aren’t connected to Blackboard in any way.

The OSCELOT gang is a bunch of fun, bright individuals who have a true passion for advancing education with open source tools, apps, simulators, etc. Many of them are instructional designers, librarians, sysadmins, and individuals only tangentially connected to Blackboard who contribute their own non-work time to this organization. Personally, I think you are doing them a huge disservice by knocking their work in this way. Their vision is much bigger than being just a Blackboard development shop. As for me, I’m quite proud of what they do – just as you are proud of the work going on in the Sakai community. In fact, some of the contributors to OSCELOT also contribute to Sakai. Hopefully as everyone commits to and implements the open standards that we both believe in, we’ll see collaborative opportunities through organizations such as OSCELOT that will afford us the opportunity to more effectively move forward together.

It certainly was not my intention to denigrate the OSCELOT contributors in any way, and I appreciate George’s note to correct the record regarding the organization.

That said, none of this changes my main point about Blackboard, Inc.’s opportunistic touting of the value of open source when it is developed for their platform while simultaneously attacking it with falsehoods and poor argumentation when it competes with their offerings.

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Post tags: Blackboard-Inc., OSCELOT

SunGard Announces Support for IMS Learning Information Services

Michael Feldstein — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:17:11 +0000

There was some good news out of last week’s IMS meeting. I’ll have more to say about the meeting in general in a future post, but for now I just want to applaud SunGard for publicly committing to support the IMS Learning Information Services (LIS) specification in the upcoming 8.1 release of Banner Student (due out in the first quarter of next year, I think). Having the two biggest SIS vendors in the United States on board with the standard should drive adoption by LMSs (and other systems that need to know which people are in which courses).

Expect more LIS-related announcements soon.

Blackboard’s Response to Open Source: Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt

Michael Feldstein — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:36:26 +0000

Blackboard has not been having a good time in the state of North Carolina. As I noted recently, the University of North Carolina (a Blackboard customer) reported highly favorable results of their pilot study of Sakai, with an outcome of further investigation into Sakai as a full replacement of Blackboard as their primary LMS. It turns out that this was following on the heels of a similar study done by the North Carolina Community College system favorably comparing Moodle to Blackboard. The details were different but some of the underlying dynamics were the same: the open source system in each case was found to be functionally equivalent to Blackboard for all practical purposes, the open source platforms did roughly as well as Blackboard (in the Moodle evaluation) or better than Blackboard (in the Sakai case) in usability evaluations, and Blackboard was deemed to be expensive relative to the alternatives.

What’s interesting in the Moodle evaluation is that Blackboard wrote a response, which was published by the North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS). And the heart of the response is a swipe at open source with many claims that are…factually and logically questionable.

Unfortunately, the PDF has some sort of copy protection on it that prevents copy/paste. (I thought Blackboard was on an openness kick….) So I have laboriously retyped the section of the response entitled “Top Five Risks to Consider When Evaluating Open Source” so that we can weigh the strengths of Blackboard’s arguments together. I apologize for any mistranscriptions.

Here we go:

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Read the rest of Blackboard’s Response to Open Source: Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (3,363 words)

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Post tags: Blackboard-Inc., learning-management-systems, Moodle, North Carolina Community College System, open source, University of North Carolina

The Cost of the Blackboard Patent Suit (and Who Pays It)

Michael Feldstein — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:12:47 +0000

An e-Literate reader comments on my post about Blackboard owing Desire2Learn money:

The amount [that Blackboard will have to pay Desire2Learn, including the original award plus interest] will probably be over $3.8M USD from my rough estimates which is higher than the expected writedown Blackboard took. This should result in additional expenses that will have to be recorded by BBBB.

What’s also interesting is that Blackboard’s top execs made record bonuses before this writedown, at the same time they took away any salary increases and the 401K plans for the regular staff. I think that is the bigger story.

Blackboard reported a $2.8 million net profit in 2008. The $3.3 million write down brings them to a $500,000 loss. An additional estimated write-down of another half a million would bring them to a $1 million loss for 2008. In the same year, Michael Chasen received $545,833 in salary, $663,039 in bonus, $1,833,560 in stock options, $80,466 in shares of restricted stock, and $14,911 in “other compensation”, for total compensation that was valued at $3,137,809. Matt Small received $370,833 in salary, $166,544 in bonus, $722,966 in stock options, $40,233 in shares of restricted stock, and $17,372 in “other compensation”, for a total compensation of $1,317,958. Coincidentally, if you add up the 2008 bonuses for the five Blackboard executives listed in the company’s proxy statement, the total is $1,074,127—almost exactly what the company’s final adjusted net loss for 2008 may turn out to be.

Moving forward, Blackboard is apparently going to incur the additional expense of an attempt to appeal their failed patent suit to the Supreme Court, even though Matt Small is on record saying that it is highly unlikely they will succeed.

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Post tags: Blackboard-Inc., Corporate finance, edunomics, edupatents, Executive compensation, Matt Small, Michael-Chasen, Supreme Court

Blackboard Owes Desire2Learn Over Three Million Dollars

Michael Feldstein — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 14:12:21 +0000

(cc) photo credit: zolierdos

I’m a little late on this one, but late last week the U.S. Court of Appeals denied Blackboard’s rehearing petition. Their only recourse now would be to appeal to the United States Supreme Court and hope that the court miraculously decides to hear their case. As a result, Blackboard will have to return roughly $3.3 million to Desire2Learn, wiping out 100% of the company’s earnings for 2008.

This does not mean that the litigation is over. Blackboard is still suing D2L in Canada for infringement of the original patent, and the company has been granted continuation patents (basically revised versions of the original patents) that they could assert.

© michael.feldstein for e-Literate, 2009. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Blackboard-Inc., Desire2Learn, edunomics, edupatents