2018 IN REVIEW: LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

By Henry Kronk (eLearning Insider).

For the past several years, venture capital, along with some public incentives, have surged into edtech, spurring advances and development that continually seek to improve education worldwide through technology. 2018 was no different. In the learning management system (LMS) market, trends from previous years by and large continued, and certain players passed important milestones. 

While other edtech sub markets–such as online test prep, remote tutoring, and textbook and course supplement publishing–have seen strong competition eked out by numerous different players, the barriers of entry in the LMS arena remain demanding and insurmountable to most. 

Blackboard vs. Canvas by Instructure

Since Canvas by Instructure began to gain traction among U.S. institutions around 2013, it has steadily added new clients, eating mostly into Blackboard’s market dominance as legacy contracts signed in the aughts have begun to expire. According to the e-Literate blog run by Michael Feldstein and Phil Hill, which monitors the LMS market among many other things, Canvas drew virtually even with Blackboard in terms of North American market share as of July 6. It is likely they have since surpassed the long-time proprietary LMS giant.   Read the complete article