E-Ménage à trois?

The union of quite possibly three of the biggest players on the e-learning scene happened yesterday. After watching Germany get knocked out of the World Cup last night my Twitter feed came alive, but not with the usual critique of the last 90 minutes, Blackboard had announced that they had bought Wimba and Elluminate in a $116 million cash deal.

Wimba and Elluminate, for those of you that don’t know, create online collaboration tools, focusing on the synchronous rather than the asynchronous. Virtual classrooms, voice tools, instant messaging and content creation are all part of the portfolio, things that Blackboard have if I’m perfectly honest struggled with. Perhaps this may have been on the cards for a while, thinking about Blackboard’s Virtual Classroom tool it feels like it hasn’t been updated for a long long time, maybe for this reason?

So what does this mean for the world of e-learning? Blackboard Collaborate looks to bring together all of the best bits that the trio has to offer. As institutions struggle to evolve and adapt to the needs of learners and the fragile economy they have had to look past the now standard VLE implementation and supplement it with tools to engage groups such as distance learners. A rich source of revenue for institutions now comes from providing courses via distance learning, here at Teesside we offer courses to students in Malaysia, Greece and Bahrain to name a few and supporting these students by means other than just placing material online has been challenging.

Admittedly we don’t use the virtual classroom tools that Wimba and Elluminate have to offer but by creating Blackboard Collaborate the seams between the third party tools and the VLE are drawn closer, providing an almost “out of the box” learning environment which covers the needs of traditional classroom, blended and distance learners.

The student learning experience has become value added, we’ve moved on from rushed notes being taken in lectures to slides being placed online, videos of whole lectures for students to review, podcasts providing extra information and social tools to encourage students to collaborate outside the classroom. Virtual Classrooms give staff the ability to bring together resources into a single container and encourage students to take part, even the shy student unwilling to raise a hand for the fear of being singled out can now raise a virtual hand privately and have their questions answered.

It’s still very early in the Blackboard Collaborate story and no details have been announced on where it will sit in the Blackboard portfolio, will Learn transition into the basic offering and Collaborate be a premium option? Blackboard have to get their $116 million back and please the shareholders who after last year’s acquisition of ANGEL Learning have seen only a small return on their investment.

Another question being raised is how easy will it be for institutions to make an exit from the Blackboard ecosystem, will users feel locked in with no option other than to go to Blackboard who are rapidly buying up the premier software providers in the sector. With basic blogs and wikis recently added to 9.1 how long will it be before Blackboard buy up software providers such as Learning Objects to integrate their offerings into the Blackboard portfolio?

Users of open source software such as Moodle and software from other commercial LMS providers will be pleased to know that Blackboard have already stated that they will continue their work to integrate the products. They are still a much needed revenue stream for Blackboard even if they’re not going to buy their core product, but for how long will the collaboration products be available separately?

These are exciting times for education and as we look for ways to engage and captivate learners the tools are coming together for us to do so in an integrated and organised way. One can only hope that measures being taken now by the government in the UK do not stifle innovation in the education sector, yes work has to be done to reduce the budget deficit but if the government continues to undervalue the work that we do in the sector we will lose valuable skills that contribute to the economy.