Well... that was... interesting to say the least!

Just yesterday I was writing about Lore going away...it seems that Pearson is also getting out of the LMS business as well.  I noticed this on Pearson's OpenClass website:

OpenClass will retire on January 1, 2018

I think that Pearson's other LMS, LearningStudio is also going away.  LearningStudio was a rebranding of eCollege - a product we had tested at work back in 2012 when I was working with the LMS team.  When OpenClass was announced (in 2011?) it was a big deal because it meant that we could use our Google domains to run an open LMS which tied into other things we used (google contacts, calendars, email, chat, and so on).  My friend @cdetorres had set up OpenClass for the ActivePhysics project he was working on at the time and I had played around with it.



It was an interesting LMS to try out, and I actually liked it for what it was worth.  I actually thought of it a lot within a MOOC context, and that it would be interesting to use this (along with Google+ for example) in MOOCs.  I think, for me, the main nail in the its coffin was that it needed a Google Apps for Edu setup in order to be able to install this application.  The (free) Google Apps for domains I have is not for education, so I could never really install it and try it on my own Google Apps.  Too bad.


It's not that OpenClass, or Pearson, was/is a big name in the LMS market, but I am wondering where the LMS market - and the LMS in general, are headed over the next decade...

What are your thoughts on this?


Enthusiasm from 2011: