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Not Going Away
251 Plays8 months ago
After briefly discussing the Udacity acquisition, Phil, Morgan, and Neil look deeper into the LMS market. Where it’s going, is it feasible to expect new entrants, role of AI, and a healthy dose of philosophy thrown in.
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Transcript
Conference Experiences and Hotel Stays
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome to online education across the Atlantic. I'm here again with Neil Mosley and Glenda Morgan. So it's great to see you all even if Neil, you've had more of a chance to relax today while Morgan and I are doing the delightful living in hotel room experiences at different conferences this week.
00:00:29
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like I'm winning when it comes to time difference. Just after lunch for me, feeling good and fresh, feeling awake, and nice to be in the comfort of my own home. So yeah, there's winners and losers every week, isn't there? That's right. How's your hotel that you're at, Morgan?
Caitlin Clark's Impact on Women's Sports
00:00:49
Speaker
I think you're in Texas right now, right?
00:00:51
Speaker
Yes, I'm in San Antonio. And the hotel is fine. There's Boys and Girls State basketball championships going on. So the hotel is packed with teenagers. But I can report that I was delighted to hear a bunch of the boys discussing basketball and all their conversation was about Caitlin Clark. Yeah, she has taken over the news and the sports lately.
00:01:16
Speaker
Yes, and I was struck by how far we had come in terms of women's sports and so on when teenage boys are just talking about what shot she hit and this like that. She's the biggest star right now. For those of you who are across the Atlantic, she is a player for the University of Iowa who has just broken all the records for both men and women in terms of the number of points she scored during her career. She's kind of extraordinary.
00:01:46
Speaker
Well, great. I'm glad you're having more excitement in the hotel than me. I'm in Hagerstown, Maryland, on the way actually driving from Washington, D.C. to Denver delivering a car to a daughter. So getting to see the countryside. And we might actually cover this
Post-OPM Conference Challenges and Revenue Share
00:02:02
Speaker
just a little bit. So where I came from is the post-OPM conference that Noodle put on.
00:02:08
Speaker
I had written about that. It was an interesting conference. There was so much drama and turmoil getting into the conference. I didn't get the final panel defined until I think Friday or Saturday before the conference.
00:02:26
Speaker
So there was, I really had no idea how well the event would turn out. And because of who was invited or who wasn't allowed to come, namely the vast majority of revenue share, OPM providers, there was a real question about how much real conversation there would be at the conference. And if it would feel too script, maybe not too scripted, but too much of a noodle marketing event. And I say marketing because I knew they wouldn't be promoting themselves, but
00:02:56
Speaker
the message that revs your opium is dead. And I have to say, the conference came together, and it was a really good set of conversations. I certainly would have done things differently, and I'll talk about that in a future post, but it was a very worthwhile conference. I'm actually glad that I went, and that's part of the reason that Morgan's in Texas. We had decided to divide and conquer. It wasn't worth sending both of us to the event.
00:03:25
Speaker
But I'll have to figure out if I have to apologize to you or not for not sending you to DC for this. I'm sure I'll, I'll, I'll get to hear some great panels about AI today.
US Educational Policy Changes Affecting OPMs
00:03:35
Speaker
So I bet it'll be great. Well, I will say, yeah, I'm sure it will. The university of Texas system conference that you're at does have some great stuff. I will just a couple of things actually, just to let you guys know. So under secretary of education, James qual.
00:03:51
Speaker
He had a lunch interview with Doug Wutterman from Inside Higher Ed. And a lot of this is reading between the lines. Obviously, he couldn't answer a lot of questions directly. But one of the things I'll say is they have both TPS guidance expansion
00:04:12
Speaker
and the bundled services exception, which if they remove it, it gets rid of revenue share within the United States would really impact rev share OPMs, that both of those, he has a strong desire to get both of those finalized this calendar year. He made no signs at all that we might not do either one of those.
00:04:38
Speaker
I, for me, it sounds like they're both still on the table and on the TPS guidance expansion for the people who have done all the reading on that. They didn't seem to be going back. I had predicted that when they re-release it, it would be focused just on marketing and student recruitment, that that would be the set of activities that would trigger this new regulation and
00:05:03
Speaker
but they're still looking at software providers. They're still looking at ed tech in general. So they got the message, get rid of the excesses of foreign owned companies. They got rid of that type of thing, but they don't, I can't tell that they're pulling back the scope of the functional activities that would trigger that. So there's, there's, you know what, we have stuff to write about this year. That's, that's one way to take it away.
00:05:31
Speaker
And given the theme of the conference and that particular participant and what they had to say about what the government's planning to do, we have the BBC over here, and the BBC has to have balance. So I'm just wondering what the balance was in that conference around presenting the other side of that post-OPM.
00:05:55
Speaker
Well, I guess there's two answers to that. There was Everspring, Beth Hollenberg, who's founder, CEO of Everspring. She was there, they do rev share model. Although the way she introduces the company is like this paragraph long, we do digital services and enablement, blah, blah, blah. It's like, oh, you're a rev share OPM. So part of the, by the way, that was part of how people interpreted the phrase post-OPM was fascinating.
00:06:23
Speaker
And a lot of the definition was people are scared to use the OPM label now. They'll call themselves anything but OPMs. So she was there and on one panel. I guess the other thing is I refuse to do a moderator panel and participate if there wasn't some level of differing opinion of people to talk to. And that's part of the reason my session came together so late.
00:06:48
Speaker
I just wondered if that was a sort of a power play to get yourself on as many panels as possible, Phil? No, sort of to get myself on as few panels as possible. Mine, I had Bob Moran, who does a lot of lobbying, and he was in the Bush administration. He was involved on Senator Laura Marrow Alexander's staff, who did so much of our higher education policy. But he was there representing more of the conservative side, be cautious on regulation.
00:07:18
Speaker
Then I had Bob Shireman, who is sort of the godfather of the let's go for broke on regulation, Democrat side. I hate viewing it as Republican versus Democrat, but when you're talking lawmaking, it was there. So we had balance there. It was actually set up as a cage fight. And they served mimosas before our panel, even though it was in the morning, because they said it was going to get contentious.
00:07:45
Speaker
You know, I saw the, I saw the lineup actually, Phil, and I was very tempted to message you, you know, some kind of boxing analogy. Yeah. But I thought I'd, I thought I'd hold off. So it was two Bobs in a fill. Yeah. The two Bobs. What is it you say you do here? But, uh, yeah, I made the point that with the box, yeah, people thought it'd be a cage match with me as the corrupt referee who interferes at the thing. But.
00:08:11
Speaker
with the age of all of us, that wouldn't be a pretty sight. So we went more with the debate.
Accenture's Acquisition of Udacity: AI Upskilling Strategy
00:08:16
Speaker
So the other news, I'll definitely be writing about this, but the other news that we want to get to before we get to our main topic, which is what everybody has on their mind, LMS market, VLE market, let's talk about that space. So we're going to.
00:08:35
Speaker
But the other thing is Accenture jumping in and buying Udacity. And for nobody knows the exact price, well, somebody does, but it appears to be for less than $100 million. And that was a little bit unexpected. But what did you guys think about when you saw that news about that acquisition? Were you surprised by it?
00:08:59
Speaker
Yeah, I was surprised by it. It wasn't a sort of a play that I'd expect from a consultancy. But I guess looking into it, obviously there's more details that will probably come out over time about what this looks like.
00:09:14
Speaker
It felt a bit like to me that in a similar way when the kind of Coursera report came out recently, you know, they seem to really emphasize the opportunity that they felt that was there around courses and offerings that are upskilling people for a kind of an AI economy or however you want to put it.
00:09:35
Speaker
you know, this struck me that, you know, Accenture were kind of looking to get a piece of that pie really. And I think, I don't know, I mean, my reflections on what, you know, the information that's come out is that the way it was framed was about AI, it was about AI upskilling and AI within the platform, but
00:09:56
Speaker
The only thing that came across to me and maybe I've not read widely enough was this kind of idea that it was an AI recommendation engine. So you know the cynic in me says this is a play to get a share of the AI upskilling market and actually you know the platform doesn't sound like it's going to be this kind of
00:10:15
Speaker
really innovative AI-powered platform, but it's simply going to have a recommendation. I hate this term, but I'm going to use it in a parody way, but it's almost like a Netflix
00:10:32
Speaker
for learning AI workplace upskilling things so yeah so I mean I was surprised because I wouldn't have expected necessarily Accenture to kind of do that but some of the detail I can see it from a market point of view but it didn't sound super compelling around being that innovative what did you think Morgan?
00:10:54
Speaker
Well, before we get to Morgan, if we did the video podcast, you would see Morgan and me cringing with the Netflix of phrase when that came out. But we'll go with that for right now. Yeah, that was intentional. Don't hate me. Neil is feisty this morning or this afternoon with him.
00:11:14
Speaker
he's insulted our looks already and now he wants to he wants to vex us. I was not surprised in part because I wasn't even thinking of it so much as a platform play but just it's sort of I sort of see the role of L&D as moving more centrally or at least an intention for it to be more of a thing that that staffing and other kinds of agencies have as part of their
00:11:39
Speaker
they're offering. So I saw it in that light. So it wasn't sort of that surprising. Yeah, but I don't think there's a massively insightful platform there. And so far, I haven't sort of seen any of those around. So yeah, that's, that's how I saw it. Yeah, and it doesn't, it doesn't seem to be representative of the MOOC market, like so much of this
00:12:03
Speaker
Anytime you see a distress sale less than $100 million, it's not quite just for parts, but it's really a distress sale. Then it's like the sale is almost more about audacity and not about the market.
00:12:18
Speaker
And so I think there was just a very, a lot of this was, it was an opportunity for Accenture. And the thing I would add to it, Accenture has got a lot of people. Don't forget about their internal training needs. I mean, this could be a platform, not just to get into that space commercially for what they sell, but just to be able to onboard their staff and have tighter control and solve an internal issue that they have. And I think that's part of the play as well, most likely.
00:12:48
Speaker
Yeah, I think that point of where Udacity were or are, I think is a really important one because we're not necessarily talking about an online education company that's kind of flying, you know, it felt like it was, you know, completely like this more kind of meandering along than
00:13:06
Speaker
than flying. So you know, I always had a question mark over the Udacity and it's kind of future really. So yeah, I think I kind of concur with that, like there's an opportunity there isn't there
LMS Market Trends: Winners and Losers
00:13:18
Speaker
for them. I did see a snarky comment on LinkedIn, somebody pointed it, remember that Sebastian Thrun had mentioned that thing back in the day about how, you know, in 10 years, there'll be 50 universities left around the world and, and, and now it's Udacity that's, that's being sold.
00:13:36
Speaker
almost for parts. I think Morgan, probably someone's writing a business study, a case study, sorry, for business schools as we as we speak on it, or maybe. Yeah, I was going to ask if Morgan was the one who wrote that LinkedIn snarky post that she's referencing. All right, so now that Udacity is gone, it's going to be embedded within there. Did we ever 100% realize if it's Udacity or Udacity?
00:14:05
Speaker
Did we ever resolve that problem? No, but I have a bit of a reputation for pronouncing things wrong, which I sometimes blame on the fact that I'm not from here, wherever here is. But yeah, I pronounced them wrong when I was there as well. That's the truth. Okay. Well, it is momentous. And to be quite honest, they're deserving of some of the snark, they set themselves up for this.
00:14:29
Speaker
That's the quick read that we have on this. But the main topic we want to get into is what the rest of the world calls the learning management system market. But in the UK, they call the virtual learning environment market, the VLE market. And both of us, Morgan and I from a North American higher ed, an actual global report, we just put that out.
00:14:53
Speaker
And coincidentally, Neil just put out his update on the UK VLE market. So we wanted to, that's what we want to talk in more depth today. So I'm handing it over to you, Morgan, make this exciting. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it is exciting. It's, it's, it's, it's a time to stop and think about where things are going and how things are going. So we just put out our, our end of year 23 reports and Neil had his,
00:15:20
Speaker
his summary coming out as well. So my question to you all was, was there anything in there that you found surprising, you know, that made you sit up and go, hmm, in terms as you stop to think about the reports and reflect on them? Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say surprising.
00:15:41
Speaker
Maybe a strong wordful. Yeah. I mean, I think if I can sort of slightly reframe that question to what was interesting, I think the most interesting aspect for me was the way in which AI has the potential to differentiate the four big players. That was the interesting thing.
00:16:02
Speaker
for me you know because I think that would be also quite a nice I mean as a as a sort of an analyst looking at this it's kind of that that would provide more interest as well as being interesting in and of itself and provide more choice because I think you know one of the things that I guess I noted in the kind of UK is that the
00:16:26
Speaker
a couple of contenders that may have added to, you know, a more interesting dynamic in terms of the companies that are involved in the market, you know, haven't really have kind of fallen by the wayside. So, you know...
00:16:42
Speaker
Owlet and edgy flow, yeah, sorry, I should be explicit. So when we're thinking about interest and, I guess, differentiation, a couple of products that may have kind of entered the market and provided that have not been able to do that. And so therefore, actually, the interesting thing for me was just around the way AI would differentiate the four. But yeah, no major surprises, really, for me.
00:17:10
Speaker
Yeah, it's not really a surprising market. I mean, you've got this case where the trends not only are settling in, and let's talk about the trends. You mentioned the big four. Basically, the story is, it's Instructure's Canvas, D2L Brightspace. Those two systems tend to be winning most of the new deals, and they're taking away from Anthology's Blackboard Learn and Moodle.
00:17:36
Speaker
And that's turning out to be the case. It has been for years, but the pattern is getting even more set. That's true across the globe. More and more global regions have that same dynamic. It is interesting that in India, there's a little bit of difference because Canvas really isn't a player in India. It's much more of a
00:17:58
Speaker
Well, you have Moodle activity in some installed base, but it's Anthology and D2L that are fighting it out there quite a bit. But in general, it's the big four, it's Canvas and Brightspace tend to be winning.
00:18:11
Speaker
taking share from Blackboard and Moodle. So some of this just is the, yeah, we're seeing more of it and this is what it means. Probably the most notable, I'll answer the question, what's the most notable is in North American higher education, when you scale it by enrollment, D2L Brightspace just passed Blackboard Learn. So Blackboard is now third place in terms of market share. When you account for enrollment,
00:18:40
Speaker
within North America and that sort of momentous as well. So that was probably the most notable finding. So we're entering interesting and notable, but not really surprising. It's par for the course for me when I remember at one point blackboard in terms of the data we had was 75%. When was that was that 2006 or so?
00:19:02
Speaker
Yeah, the peak of the market was after the acquisition of WebCT. And so the middle to late 2000s, the peak of the market, I think 73%. But yeah, it was in the way that you see Moodle in many global regions with 65 plus percent market share quite often above 70%.
Moodle's Usability and Competitive Challenges
00:19:23
Speaker
Blackboard had that in North America back in the mid 2000s. And then they, of course, acquired Angel, picked up a lot of customers there. But it's been a long-term decline from them. But yes, they did peak up in the 70s.
00:19:40
Speaker
I suddenly had a flashback to the day that the Blackboard acquisition of WebCT was announced. You and I were in a meeting in a hotel outside of LAX. I remember that. One of many... That's right. And one of our colleagues ran in with this... It was an LMS conference, ironically. Yes. And somebody runs into the room that we both know. It's like, Blackboard bought WebCT! But it's like this big shock to... It was a shock to the system.
00:20:09
Speaker
Yeah, this is interesting. Talking about the sort of, you know, looking over at many of the markets in terms of the listed tech data, you know, Moodle has been on a slow sort of downward trend and sort of plateauing or losing a couple of percentage there. But there've been a lot of big shifts at Moodle this year, you know, with
00:20:31
Speaker
Martin stepping down from CEO to go be head of research and getting a new CEO coming out of Pearson, as well as some changes that happened earlier on product management and things like that. What do you think that Moodle needs to do to actually shift the trajectory so that they're actually starting to win new clients?
00:20:54
Speaker
They need to do the two things they've been talking about for years, but not actually achieving. And number one is out of the box usability. You know, they touted Moodle 4 as a redesign to improve usability, make it competitive.
00:21:11
Speaker
Let me take a step back, a little editorial step back. The market might seem boring, same four players, not huge shifts in the same trends and the same. It seems boring, but it's actually really important. And the other thing is these systems are so much better than they used to be. If you look at the four platforms and compare it to 10 to 15 years ago, it's remarkable to me how much better they are.
00:21:40
Speaker
They're not clunky, they're more reliable, easier to navigate. So this is a market that's made dramatic strides on usability. Now, out of the big four, the one that's made the least improvement is Moodle. Moodle 4 just did not work. And I think it didn't work in terms of changing the usability game. And I think part of the reason is their development process, they're held back by being open source at this point.
00:22:09
Speaker
So when they say, let's redesign to make it more usable, it goes to global committee. And so you end up with, here's a great little enhancement to this column in the grade book that shows up when you're doing time base, whatever. And they just don't hit it. So they've got to address usability in a successful way. And that's going to take a small design team to accomplish.
00:22:37
Speaker
They did it with Moodle Workplace, ironically, but that's because they changed the business model for Moodle Workplace and achieved that. And then the other one is sales. They do not effectively address RFPs or tenders where it's a formal evaluation. They hold themselves back. Their partners do not do a good job.
00:23:00
Speaker
on writing proposals and giving demos. So in my mind, those are the two things they will have to do if they want to stay. They are very relevant to stop losing their relevance. So that's my field, Neil.
00:23:17
Speaker
Yeah, I would echo some of those things. I mean, I think in a way it feels as if the kind of market has caught up with Moodle's model a little bit and kind of exposed that quite significantly. And so I think there's that aspect of it really, and you make a good point around how they're competing for business and also the kind of the strength of the product. And you look, I guess there's always things that you could say around kind of product development
00:23:47
Speaker
I'd almost also say I feel like it might need a bit of a rebrand.
Does Moodle Need Rebranding?
00:23:52
Speaker
And I'm not necessarily saying a new name or anything. But I think with Moodle and with Blackboard Learn, as much as I'd love to believe that every decision that we make is based on an objective evaluation of the quality of the product, we know that that's not true. And therefore, those incumbents
00:24:13
Speaker
have years of a particular reputation of them being a bit more static. And I think that aided newer entrants to win business over them, that and other things. So I think there's something around some more verve and a rebrand that needs to happen. There's something that's a bit softer, shall we say, than just developing the product.
00:24:39
Speaker
that they need to do and obviously that's not necessarily easy to quantify but I think they need to sort of turn the dial a little bit on how they're perceived and I'll do that through product and I'll do that through other means but I think also the kind of branding side of things and you know the marketing and the kind of PR side of things I think is part of that so you know I think there's quite a few things there to address and I actually think as well you know
00:25:07
Speaker
I just don't think, certainly in the UK, Blackboard have been more at risk than Moodle because it's a lot easier for an institution to just sit on Moodle perpetually than it is for Blackboard. And so actually, I think the situation would be far worse for Moodle if it wasn't for their model. But their model is also problematic to their growth, if that doesn't sound too contradictory. Oh, it doesn't. That's a great point.
00:25:35
Speaker
to get super reflective here in the John Belushi manner. I think part of Moodle getting it right also has to be becoming comfortable with their role as an LMS. If you think about it, the roots of most problems that we have as people is not being okay with ourselves. And sometimes I wonder whether Moodle
00:25:55
Speaker
is comfortable with being an LMS. There seems to be an element of self-dislike there or something. And I see it sometimes in other companies too, often with edtech companies, and actually I'll pick on Aula here. I remember getting a briefing from them. And they said, well,
00:26:12
Speaker
really, we'll give you a briefing, but we're not an LMS. It's like, well, actually, you kind of are an LMS. And, you know, I think that there sort of is this sort of hatred of LMS is that permeance, you know, because they're, they're sort of boring technologies. And for a while, they were really clunky. And but as Phil said, they're getting better. But I think they need to become okay with just being an LMS. And it's a really important thing. And it's something that you can do really well.
00:26:40
Speaker
So are you saying Google needs to go for therapy? I might argue that's what's happening at the executive level. There's a lot of self-reflection and we know we need to change. That's going to trigger Morgan with one of her favorite jokes about how many sociologists it takes to change a light bulb. The system needs to change.
00:27:05
Speaker
Wouldn't you also say, since you take us into this new philosophical, psychological direction for this podcast, wouldn't you, I would add to that the capitalism. They're a for-profit capitalist company who hates that fact. So if you really want to go down that direction, they've never been
00:27:26
Speaker
comfortable with people choosing which system to go with and that price and that quality value is an important thing to address. They've never been comfortable with their position in quote unquote the market as long as we're going this direction.
00:27:44
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's interesting because we're all on kind of different sides around that kind of thing. But I think some things potentially stick. And I think I said in my posts that there's a lot of positive sentiment in the UK around an open source company that is slightly more uncomfortable as itself as a kind of a quote unquote business.
00:28:08
Speaker
But I think I put it that they can only survive on the fumes of positive sentiment for so long. I was pleased with that line. I completely agree with you, Phil. But I think the other side of that is for those people who are maybe not on that end of the spectrum.
00:28:25
Speaker
There's a danger for them that something sticks around an association with open source being less dynamic, shall we say, as a kind of a product. I know there's different types of open source products, but just in terms of the LMS market, that there's something about their model and their kind of view of themselves that for people who think differently to them
00:28:53
Speaker
make something of them even more negatively than they might have done otherwise. What is this thing you're saying? There's different kinds of open source. I'm shocked. Shocked. Sorry, internal joke here. Internal joke. Yeah. I think he's been reading our emails. Yes. I didn't want to be quoted as speaking for open source universally.
00:29:16
Speaker
changing the subject back to a safer route though something I was struck by and it took me I'm ashamed to say it took me a year to actually figure out what was going on but
00:29:27
Speaker
In 2022, when I went to OEB in Berlin, I ended up having a conversation with a bunch of European schools about the LMS and they were saying, you know, the business model just doesn't work here. And then it was only last year that I had the same conversation that I finally figured out, it's just that they're used to the business, the Moodle business model. So when an instructor comes in or something like that and charges them a per student fee, they can't justify that given the levels of usage, you know, so
00:29:57
Speaker
Do you think that culture will change? Is there room to shift to be an understanding that, hey, this is a crucial system for learning and we need to probably pay for it one way or the other, whether it's for an open source company or a private company?
00:30:17
Speaker
I think that's liable to change. I mean, I think there is always that element of either the complaints or the grumbling. The longer you have a product, irrespective of its quality, the likelihood is that more people are going to complain about it. And you might have a disproportionate sense of people being unhappy with it than is necessarily the case. So I think there's a few different factors like the longevity of having a product
00:30:46
Speaker
Higher education and i can't speak for the whole of europe but in general higher education seems to be in a very very tricky place across the world and therefore you know there there is an element of which. A perception that you can get a better lms as differentiating you and making you more competitive is is a kind of component of it so i think.
00:31:09
Speaker
There are some drivers there that can nudge that along in terms of thinking differently and changing the model for sure. I think, like I said earlier, I think that's also kind of what has elated a more serious decline with Moodle as well. So there is that kind of element to it as well.
00:31:29
Speaker
Isn't there a little bit of a cause and effect reversal possibility with this question? To the extent if Moodle and with the management change and more of a product focus, if they succeed and if they're able to get Moodle,
00:31:46
Speaker
much more usable and at least be able to help out when there is a tender or competition for them. If they're successful, wouldn't that in Germany sort of reverse or keep some more of the gas in the tank and keep them away from the fumes stage because they're comfortable with the business model, but what they're not comfortable with is, as you said, the sense there's something better out there. So if Moodle succeeds, it might give them a much longer time to avoid.
00:32:14
Speaker
the chance that you're talking about, Morgan, in Europe, a little bit in France, but in certain parts of Europe, particularly Germany. I mean, Germany is the main area, I think, where you see that.
00:32:25
Speaker
I think that's definitely true, but I'm also intrigued about the possibilities of sort of disruption of the market, or at least a new player, because sort of going back, I remember some years ago reading a post maybe of yours, Phil, and, you know, I'm sorry, I don't actually commit them to complete memory, but I swear I did remember reading this about, you know, the problem was that Canvas really came as a surprise, even to analysts who watch the market, because for a long time, there'd be new products coming up.
00:32:55
Speaker
you know, because the sales cycles are so long in higher ed, it would take too long to actually start to get money coming in the door and they'd either go out of business or Blackboard would buy them back in the day. So we didn't see a lot of sort of sustained things. Even despite, you know, the disappearance of two potential challengers there, it you know, that Neil mentioned, do you think we'll see some new companies coming up with some newer offerings?
00:33:22
Speaker
I think we will continue to have this conversation for another decade. And I don't mean that about the three of us. I mean it about the higher ed community.
Barriers for New LMS Market Entrants
00:33:31
Speaker
Short answer is no, I don't. This is a market where the barrier to entry is huge.
00:33:39
Speaker
And part of that is LMS is actually complex, particularly around the quizzing engine and around the grade book. They're actually very difficult to write with so many different use cases and faculty who want different conditions for grading and quizzing. And it's messy, and it's not at a global scale. So you get Google Classroom. That is the only one, I can say, that's materially impacted the market within the past 10 years.
00:34:09
Speaker
Google classroom doesn't but they take the approach of we're only going this far We're not we don't need to make money on this so the grade books and you have to play on our terms Yes, yeah
00:34:22
Speaker
So, so, you know, you would say Google classroom, you got to throw that in the market, particularly on the K 12 side and in Asia for higher ed, but for like VC funded startup companies, since it's a podcast and it's not transcribed. No, it's not going to happen there. We're not going to see new entrance. It's the market's too difficult and everybody who tries it, there's not capital to break through. No, it's not going to happen in my view.
00:34:50
Speaker
Yeah, I broadly agree with that. I mean, I think I said as well, you know, there were a couple of entrants in the UK that Auler and Edgiflow, two of them, and I think there's a sense in which people will have their fingers burnt slightly because, you know, there were a few universities that took on Auler and, you know, some have had to move.
00:35:12
Speaker
From from then so you know if you've been part of a journey in which you've kind of made a bit more of a kind of a more radical move in terms of selection and that's proved to be.
00:35:24
Speaker
to not work out for you and you're being compelled to move really rather than through the usual cycle of review and terms and stuff, then I think that's potentially going to make people more reticent, even if there were players in the market. I think where there might be something is, I guess something we haven't talked about is there's the core LMS in a university, say, for example,
00:35:52
Speaker
but then you know what i've been seeing in the uk is that there are lms's for online education and that's usually because there's an opm partnership and the opm would prefer if you know another platform is being used but i've also seen a little bit of movement around lms's that are that are out there kind of
00:36:13
Speaker
maybe the sort of CPD market and oh continuing professional development. I suppose it's kind of the short course, adult education, continuing education, continuing professional development kind of space and I've seen movement around there in terms of people adopting products because that's the kind of that's the kind of route where you're not sort of
00:36:36
Speaker
you're not a student of the university to the extent that you are when you're on a degree, if I can put it like that. So I'm not necessarily saying that's a kind of a big growing thing, but there are instances of that and we have funding changes and short course loan entitlement and things like that. So, you know, I think that might be somewhere where some newer entrants might have some purchase. But yeah, I broadly agree with Phil, you know, it's so hard to get into.
00:37:05
Speaker
But surely that's not, and yeah, I realize now as I stop to think about it that I'm not arguing with you, but in a way that issue is an issue of identity management at the institution because they can't figure out a way to run the main LMS plus something for students who are not part of the institution.
00:37:26
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think to sort of wrap that around a little bit, the thing that I see more is more concern around the updating of other systems than the LMS. As much as the LMS could always be better, I think around systems, there's other bigger priorities. Because where I thought you were going to go, and I thought I was going to have to climb down the
00:37:52
Speaker
the wires and come to Wales and punch you on the nose. But something I used to have to deal with a lot was like, oh, well, we need a different LMS because Blackboard or Instructure or Desire2Learn doesn't deal with chemistry. So we need a chemistry specific LMS. And it's like, no, you don't need a chemistry specific LMS. What you want is something that you don't have to collaborate with anybody about.
00:38:16
Speaker
You don't have to follow, want to have to follow FERPA rules or those sorts of things. You want to just do your own kind of thing. Yeah, that's a very sort of academic version of an LMS, isn't it? Yes. Well, speaking of things I was worried about when Morgan said identity management, I'm like, are we going back to the philosophical, psychological debate? Oh, and then I'm like, oh, identity and access management.
HBCUB's Platform Development for HBCUs
00:38:42
Speaker
This might bring it a little
00:38:44
Speaker
This might bring it back full circle for this whole conversation, but one of the groups that was at the conference this week was the HBCUB. So the United Negro College Fund is sponsoring leading an effort to develop an LMS, HBCU, Historically Black Colleges and University specific platform. But then what does platform mean? So when it came out,
00:39:11
Speaker
The definition of platform included we need to write a custom new LMS. And when I first read that, I'm like, no, I'm not saying you can never go past the big four or maybe throw in a cipher learning that's really got a good product and has some share in different areas. But why would we be spending this money to create a new grade book and think that's going to help HBCUs?
00:39:38
Speaker
Well, one of the great things that happened is they have redefined their platform. They're not talking about paying Deloitte to write a new LMS. That was one of the original plans from what I could tell. I'm very, very glad to hear that. Yes. Yeah. One of the best things I saw and then they're doing much more about
00:39:58
Speaker
the language, the presentation, the collaboration tools. So where they're doing technical work is on the periphery of LMS. So it's not, as everybody knows, CPD type of LMS, but it is more around the periphery on the functionality side as well. So I think that's the pattern where
00:40:19
Speaker
you will continue to see is where there's innovation in terms of new companies and new approaches. It's going to be on the periphery of the main LMS, but at least for the past 10 to 15 years, I still maintain the core LMS has continued to improve.
00:40:39
Speaker
And so we're in a good situation, but there is a risk if any one vendor becomes too dominant in the LMS again, that the core platform will go backwards or stop improving. But I think that's where it's going to be periphery VC new platforms.
00:41:00
Speaker
I haven't heard it lately, but for a while, especially around about 2019, I was lectured a lot by people out in the world about, oh, but you're ignoring Teams and the fact that Teams is just going to become the new LMS. But here we are in 2024, and Teams is not the LMS. Where do you see that heading, if you have thoughts? Yeah, I mean, I guess one of the issues with Teams is
00:41:28
Speaker
you know, even their kind of class function feels like it's trying to appeal to different audiences or from a higher education perspective, their classroom kind of teams, it looked more like K-12 than higher education for me. And so I think that's one aspect of it. And there's different aspects of it. I mean, I think we've spoken before, I'm not a great lover of teams, but I think
00:41:57
Speaker
There's that aspect of it, the perception of which audience it's for. In the UK, it originated in institutions as more of a kind of a workplace technology than a learning or education technology. So there's that hurdle to cross. I think there's an element of risk, isn't there, if you're doing something that no one else has done? I mean, we have one small institution, as far as I know,
00:42:22
Speaker
that is using it as a sort of de facto VLE. But it's a very small institution. But I think there's a range of different factors. And the product is one of those as to why it's not taking off. And I think, to be honest, a lot of people in the public sector in the UK are compelled to use teams. I'm not compelled to use teams. And whenever I work with those people, they are very glad to meet me on Zoom. And that's all I'm saying.
00:42:53
Speaker
Yeah, isn't Teams a identity management system designed to prevent you from easily accessing functionality with some cool functionality behind it? And, you know, great for security, but it's not compelling for educators, particularly faculty, students, to be able to just easily use because the role of an LMS is to get out of the way.
00:43:18
Speaker
The role of the LMS, handle the administration, do this, make it easy to find things, but the best it always does is get out of the way. Just make it easy and disappear. Teams has a different mentality around the product design. So I think we'll continue to see exactly what Neil described. Maybe a school here or there trying it, but there's no momentum behind it as an LMS or VLE replacement. It's got its purpose, but I don't think it's replacing
00:43:48
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And yeah, I haven't looked recently, or I haven't been to the University of New South Wales recently, but for a while, everybody would say, yeah, but University of New South Wales is using Teams as an LMS. No, no, one guy in the engineering school is using Teams as an LMS. The rest of them are using Moodle, or at least they were.
00:44:08
Speaker
But in terms of the LMS getting out of the way, I was sort of struck by that yesterday because a couple of weeks ago, I got a briefing by a really fun product called Nectar in CTIR, which is a new way of discussing. Essentially, it's like Slack in some ways for higher ed. And it plugs into the LMS. And I was just talking about, you know, it became necessary for them to understand how to do that because it was the way in. Yeah, there's innovation in the market. It's just not LMS replacement.
00:44:38
Speaker
I mean, and so that's the nature of the market right now. Hey, well, normally it's Morgan's role to hold up cue cards to tell Neil and me to be quiet, but I'll be the one to jump in now. Again, I will emphasize the LMS market, it's a difficult one to understand because on one hand it seems boring. On the other hand, it is so important and it is improving.
00:45:02
Speaker
And it's great talking and adding in the philosophy, therapy, I had some great angles that I enjoyed this. So I will talk to you guys next week.