Archive for February, 2012

MIT launches free online ‘fully automated’ course By Sean Coughlan BBC News education correspondent Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), one of the world’s top-rated universities, has announced its first free course which can be studied and assessed completely online. An electronics course, beginning in March, will be the first prototype of an online project, known [...]

Solving Problems, Navigating Change, Fostering Education Innovation. Learning is our most enduring activity. Throughout our lives, as we go to school, learn to play a musical instrument, master a discipline or enhance our professional skills, we’re all perpetual students. Continuing education and lifelong learning are critical for success in the ‘flat’ world of the 21st [...]

Ok, so the campus LMS market is in transition. Blackboard’s announced plans to retire its legacy LMS applications is a major catalyst for this transition: upwards of 700 Blackboard LMS clients, primary but not exclusively colleges and universities, confront “up or out” decisions regarding their current campus implementations of retiring Angel, WebCT, and other older Blackboard-branded LMS applications.

Although eTextbook adoption in higher education is slower that some might anticipate, growth is steady. A recent Pew Research report indicated the eReader ownership doubled this past holiday season. Apple’s recent announcement about its entry into digital textbooks and self-publishing and its goal to provide a “a new textbook experience” provides a new surge in momentum toward the mainstreaming of eTextbooks. What impact will broader adoption of eTextbooks have on your campus? For students? For faculty?

The Occupy movement is starting to set up camp in university course catalogs, syllabuses and classrooms. There are new course offerings and a new focus in older ones. Professor Jeff Edwards, who is teaching “Occupy Everywhere” at Roosevelt University in Chicago this semester, says a third of the political science majors there are enrolled in [...]

India Based LoudCloud Systems, providers of the LoudCloud Learning Management Ecosystems for Higher Education and K12, believes that “One Size Does Not Fit All” when it comes to providing solutions faced by 21st century administrators, educators and learners. Supported by two new technologies, the Adaptive Reader Technology (ART) and the Behavioral Analytics Reporting System (BARS), LoudCloud’s Learning Management Ecosystems are fully adaptive and can be configured to meet specific academic and technology needs of today’s institutions, universities, and schools for a personalized learning and teaching experience.

Oracle said Thursday that it was acquiring Taleo, an on-demand talent management software company, for US$1.9B. Taleo is a competitor to SuccessFactors, which happened to be acquired by Oracle rival SAP.

By QUENTIN HARDY Oracle’s planned purchase of Taleo is the biggest sign yet of how things are changing because of cloud-based computing technology. The effects will be felt in the workplace, on Wall Street, and not least within Oracle itself. Early Thursday February 9th, Oracle announced that it would pay $1.9 billion for Taleo, a provider of talent [...]

Acquisition Will Address Growing Market Demand for Social Learning, Mobile Learning, Learning Content Management, and the integration of Learning Management and Talent Management Kenexa (NYSE:KNXA), a global provider of business solutions for human resources, announced that it has entered into a definitive merger agreement with privately-held OutStart, a leading provider of Software as a Service (SaaS) e-learning solutions [...]