Education International
3. Learning management and experience platforms Learning management systems (LMS) are one of the most widespread and financially lucrative forms of educational technology in HE. LMSs act as digital infrastructure to host courses, store materials, record student participation in learning, and report information. They can be understood as programmed pedagogic environments that shape, delimit or constrain the possibilities of teaching and learning. As colleges and universities moved to online remote teaching and learning, LMSs have taken on an enhanced infrastructural role, moving from a background position to being a dominant medium through which institutions, staff and students interact. Even prior to the pandemic, the LMS market was vast, estimated at over US $9 billion in 2019 and expected to grow by about 20% per year to $30 billion by 2025, according to some forecasts.68 LMS providers also, importantly, have sought to enhance the use of data analytics in HE, amassed huge datasets of student information, and built interoperable integrations with third-party platform plug-ins to enable data mining at scale from the increasing participation of students in digitally-mediated education. The three market leaders in the LMS sector are Blackboard, Moodle and Canvas, and all three sought to position themselves as emergency response platforms for HE during COVID-19, with analysts forecasting the LMS market accelerating as a result of the pandemic.69 Blackboard, for example, is a long-established commercial LMS with a large global presence in HE as well as the schools sector. It consists of the Blackboard Learn platform for learning management, a videoconferencing/virtual classroom service, a mobile app, a suite of data analytics, and interoperability functionality for integration with hundreds of authorised third party platforms and apps - from Google and Microsoft products to online learning services and materials from edtech suppliers and international education businesses such as Pearson.70 Blackboard reported a 100% increase in its active user numbers in March 2020, a ‘3,600 percent surge in daily global usage’ and ‘25 billion weekly interactions’, requiring it to extend its existing partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) for cloud infrastructure, enhanced usage data visualisations and AI functionality.71 In tandem with its expanding scale of operations, upgrades, product service offerings and provision of online 68 69 70 71
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Valuates Reports. 2020, 14 April. Learning Management System (LMS) Market Size is Expected to Reach USD 29.901 Billion by 2025. PR Newswire: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/learning-management-system-lms-market-size-is-expectedto-reach-usd-29-901-billion-by-2025---valuates-reports-301040270.html Hill, P. 2020, 12 August. State of Higher Ed LMS Market for US and Canada: Mid-Year 2020 Edition. PhilOnEdTech: https://philonedtech.com/state-of-higher-ed-lms-market-for-us-and-canada-mid-year-2020-edition/ Blackboard Higher Education: https://www.blackboard.com/industries/higher-education Vieira, K. 2020, 24 August. Why We Work With AWS. Blackboard Blog: https://blog.blackboard.com/why-we-partner-with-aws/
