By Pat James-Hanz - EvoLLLution. Since its inception, online programming has continued to evolve to better meet the needs of its students, mainly non-traditional, part-time learners with competing priorities. Great strides have been taken to create rich, engaging experiences for online learners, and colleges have looked to the adoption and implementation of different tools and strategies to support this transformation. More...

By Michael Feldstein. There are a lot of things that are hard to evaluate from the outside when gauging how a company is doing under new management in the midst of a turnaround with big new products coming out. For example, how good is Ultra, Blackboard’s new user experience? (At least, I think the user experience is what they mean by “Ultra.” Most of the time.) We can look at it from the outside and play around with it for a bit, but the best way to judge it is to talk to a lot of folks who have spent time living with it and delivering courses in it. Read more...

By Phil Hill. Michael and I have made several specific criticisms of D2L’s marketing claims lately culminating in this blog post about examples based on work at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) and California State University at Long Beach (CSULB). Read more...

By Phil Hill and Michael Feldstein. Today we are thrilled to release the fifth and final case study in our new e-Literate TV series on “personalized learning”. In this series, we examine how that term, which is heavily marketed but poorly defined, is implemented on the ground at a variety of colleges and universities. We plan to cap off this series with two analysis episodes looking at themes across the case studies. Read more...

By Phil Hill. Recently I described an unpublished study by Dragan Gasevic and team on the use of Knowillage / LeaP adaptive platform.[1] The context of article was on D2L’s misuse of the results, but the study itself is interesting in terms of its findings that adaptive learning usage (specifically LeaP in addition to Moodle within an Intro to Chemistry course) can improve academic performance. I will share more when and if the results become public. Read more...