L21: LMS landscape October 2012

Market share summary (2011 data) ProductMarket share Blackboard60% Moodle19% Desire2Learn7% Sakai7% Homegrown1% All others ( eCollege, OpenClass, LoudCloud, etc.) 6% Notable newcomers (since 2011) Canvas New MOOC platforms (CourseEra)

Common core functionalities All of the major LMSs offer similar core functionality: – file and content sharing – multi-media content tools, web 2.0 mashups – testing and survey tools – grading tools – collaboration tools such as discussion boards, blogs and wikis Details and implementation will vary and need to be examined once functional requirements are defined

Some differentiating factors Open-source vs. proprietary software Externally vs. locally hosted Cloud-based vs. individual instances Look and feel and user experience Community of practice Maturity and product stability

US company; founded in 1997 at Cornell Went public in 2004; private buyout by an investment group in 2011 Acquired many competitors: WebCT, ANGEL, Elluminate, Wimba Proprietary software, java-based Very good standards compliance Modular architecture and marketing approach: Bb Learn, Bb Analytics, Bb Collaborate, Bb Mobile Also has service offerings: hosting, consulting, support Currently dominates the marketplace; large community of practice

Recently acquired two main hosting providers for Moodle and created a branch providing services for LMS open- source customers New CEO coming in December 2012

Open-source product; code created and unified by Moodle Pty, Ltd., an Australian company supported by fees from Moodle hosting partners PHP-based Major hosting partner (Moodle Rooms) acquired by Blackboard in March Built on a learner-centric

Good standards compliance Large user community/community of practice Some well-known large installations exist (UKs Open University) Many European clients US adoption as been especially strong for smaller colleges and community colleges Allows for a relatively easy out of the box open source solution

Canadian company, privately held Proprietary software, relatively standards-compliant In the licensed software arena, main competitor to Blackboard Microsoft.NET code base Main clients include several state university systems and community college consortia: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Montana, Colorado, Kentucky, Pennsylvania Not much market share outside North America Recently received an $80 million infusion of new venture capital Has a growing client base

Open-source product Consortium-based; consortium members are higher ed institutions, weighted towards North America Java-based Many major clients are institutions with considerable programming resources; recent trend is towards hosted deployments Recently spun off an open academic environment (OAE) concept which tries to move beyond the monolithic LMS

Some major OAE backers (UC Berkley, U Michigan, U Indiana) have withdrawn their support for the project in September 2012, leading to a major scaling down of the OAE project

Newcomer to the LMS world Founded in 2008 by two BYU graduates Privately-held start-up company, Instructure Code based in Ruby on Rails; available under an open-source license – though Instructure does not support community contributions to the code Cloud-based SAS service: i.e. no individual institutional control of/responsibility for upgrades or changes Particular strengths: integration of web 2.0 tools, notably Facebook and Google apps for education Clean and modern look and feel

Growing adoption: Brown University, U of Washington system

LMS marketshare –a parting view