Category: Learning Management Systems

  • Farewell, Edmodo!

    Farewell, Edmodo!

    On August 15, 2022, the learning management system community learned it was about to lose one of its members. As mentioned in the Twitter announcement, Edmodo will sunset its LMS portal (its only product) on September 22, 2022. What led to this decision? At first, we tried to understand why NetDragon (the owner of Edmodo…

  • My Take Away From the D2L Fusion Conference

    My Take Away From the D2L Fusion Conference

    I was invited to attend this year’s D2L Fusion Conference. This was my first D2L conference. It was held in Boston (Mass.), July 20-22, 2022. Instead of welcoming the regular 1,000 participants, the conference hosted around 700 attendees. The attendance drop is due, you guess it, to the COVID-19 virus and the travel difficulties it brings.…

  • Justin’s Thoughts on Anthology Together

    Justin’s Thoughts on Anthology Together

    Earlier this month, I was invited to attend the annual Anthology/Blackboard conference, entitled Anthology Together. This was my first time attending an Anthology or a Blackboard conference. The conference took place at the Walt Disney World Dolphin Resort in Orlando (Florida) from July 11th to July 14th, 2022 and had about 2,200 total attendees. I must say that…

  • Class Acquires Collaborate: Two Visions Emerge

    Class Acquires Collaborate: Two Visions Emerge

    On May 19, 2022, Class and Anthology announced they have signed a definitive agreement for Class to acquire Anthology’s Blackboard Collaborate virtual classroom tool. While Class doubles down on a future with Zoom and Blackboard Collaborate as a virtual classroom tool, Anthology goes all-in on its Blackboard Ultra LMS. Collaborate and Class: The Numbers Before…

  • A Brief History of Blackboard

    A Brief History of Blackboard

    It’s time for another company profile. For this post, we want to paint the picture of one of the first LMS companies: Blackboard. Once the leading company in this product category, Blackboard diversified its corporate assets to curb the decline of revenues and to explore new business opportunities. To understand how Blackboard started, we need…

  • Instructure’s Impressive Implementations Record

    Instructure’s Impressive Implementations Record

    In the many product categories we track, we often spot a player who has unique characteristics and who pushes us to dig a little deeper into our data. In the learning management system category, this company is Instructure, with its product Canvas. Since its inception in 2008, Instructure has seen an impressive and unmatched run…

  • PowerSchool: The Path to Dominate the K-12 Market

    PowerSchool: The Path to Dominate the K-12 Market

    Like many IT stories in the 1980s and 1990s, the creation of PowerSchool initiated from one specific need: getting attendance tracking (as well as other information) to be sent through the school district’s network. From this initial class project, Greg Porter (founder of PowerSchool) worked on his project to build the first version of PowerSchool…

  • Average Year of First Learning Management System Implementations

    Average Year of First Learning Management System Implementations

    At ListEdTech, we like to drill down into our data to better understand historical market trends. As you may know, we have lots of data on learning management systems. In this post, we want to show when the average year of the first learning management system implementation was for each country. To make sense of…

  • Moodle: The Open-Source LMS

    Moodle: The Open-Source LMS

    The learning management system product category is one where many companies fight hard to gain more market shares. Moodle set itself apart from the beginning by deciding to offer its LMS for free. In 2022, not many products remain open-source. What makes Moodle a different player? The Long History of Moodle Moodle is not only…

  • How Moodle Overtook Blackboard

    How Moodle Overtook Blackboard

    Early this week, Miami Dade College announced that Canvas will replace Blackboard as its main learning management system. For Blackboard, this is another important loss as MDC currently enrols more than 50,000 students. This is a continuation of Blackboard’s slow market decline. Looking at the historical North American market progression, we can see that Blackboard…

  • Ellucian-D2L  Expanded Partnership

    Ellucian-D2L Expanded Partnership

    The last few weeks were worthy of a Hollywood movie for D2L. First, they announced at the end of September 2021 that they will soon go public. Then, we learned in mid-October that their initial public offering (IPO) would value them at over US$1-billion. And, as the icing on the cake, Ellucian expanded its partnership…

  • Does the Educause Exhibitor’s Floor Plan Reflect Market Trends in HigherEd IT?

    Does the Educause Exhibitor’s Floor Plan Reflect Market Trends in HigherEd IT?

    Educause annual conference is around the corner. As its website mentions, “this event showcases the best thinking in higher education IT.” A few weeks back, I questioned myself about the Educause conference and its exhibitor floor plan. More precisely, I wondered if the booths were a good indicator of market trends? I decided to dig…