I am not surprised that UoP is discontinuing their LMS and It demonstrates where their thinking went wrong. I worked for a non-UoP subsidiary of APOL. Their development team came down to talk to us about what they were building. It was ambitious, but it was obvious that it would never fly, nor would it be feasible to sell it to Univerisities...that market was already locked up by Blackboard and Moodle providers. Plus, the UoP system was the exact opposite of the "plug and play" LMSs that most faculty want. This was the problem with Apollo leadership. They came in from the outside and saw UoPs problems as technology problems, rather than focusing on continuous improvement of education. So much money was thrown down the tube with the development of these kinds of white elephants...All the fads...Second Life...MOOCs...things that anyone with a rudimentary understanding of education could tell you had no real future being monetized. If only they had focused on the business of education that was supported by technology there might have been hope.
3 replies (most recent on top)
This post was well-written and to the point. There you go: technology is not the problem. The company and its values, planning, support, long-term goals, and financial vampire-ism are all the elements of the problem. Sell a steaming pile of guano to schools as an online learning platform...I guess these types have never used BlackBoard. No school is ever going to buy the platform. Hell, the UOPX OLS could be given away for free and no one would use it. It cannot even be open source as it is simply useless. Throw 30 billion dollars on it and it is still crap. It will never get off the ground. There will be no takers.
Little Moe Syzlak?
Hahahaha. Fun to see these hucksters imploding.