Stephen Downes

Alfred Essa comments on a two part article (part one, part two) on the history of the learning management system (LMS) from former Blackboard CEO Matthew Pittinsky last fall. "Today's LMS is essentially the same system we had three decades ago," summarizes Essa. "This is a stunning admission." Despite a billion dollars of investment, the LMS did nothing to advance learning in all that time. "Describing this history simply as 'investment' also obscures what was actually being optimized. Equity financing is designed to reward scale, market dominance, and successful exits - not necessarily pedagogical transformation." As we all know, Blackboard spent all this money trying to acquire its way into market dominance, to become "operating system" of education. The future? The LMS with AI "as an operating system that should orchestrates all learning." But if it does this, argues Essa, it cannot become something that advances teaching and learning.