Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed significantly to the evolution of several key computing technologies, among them Unix, RISC processors, thin client computing, and virtualized computing. At its height, the Sun headquarters were in Santa Clara, California, on the former west campus of the Agnews Developmental Center.
The University of Maine (UMaine) is a public land-grant research university in Orono, Maine. It was established in 1865 as the land-grant college of Maine and is the flagship university of the University of Maine System. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity".
Moodle is a free and open-source learning management system written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. Moodle is used for blended learning, distance education, flipped classroom and other online learning projects in schools, universities, workplaces and other sectors.
The University of Southern Maine (USM) is a public university with campuses in Portland, Gorham and Lewiston, Maine, United States. It is the southernmost of the University of Maine System. It was founded as two separate state universities, Gorham Normal School and Portland University. The two universities, later known as Gorham State College and the University of Maine at Portland, were combined in 1970 to help streamline the public university system in Maine and eventually expanded by adding the Lewiston campus in 1988.
WebCT or Blackboard Learning System, now owned by Blackboard, is an online proprietary virtual learning environment system that is licensed to colleges and other institutions and used in many campuses for e-learning. To their WebCT courses, instructors can add such tools as discussion boards, mail systems, and live chat, along with content including documents and web pages. The latest versions of this software are now called Webcourses. WebCT is significant in that it was the world's first widely successful course management system for higher education. At its height, it was in use by over 10 million students in 80 countries.
CourseInfo LLC, one of the two companies forming Blackboard Inc. was founded in 1997 by Daniel Cane and Stephen Gilfus while at Cornell University. They joined together to officially form the partnership known as CourseInfo and developed the company into a small course management software provider. The product at the time was called the Teachers Toolbox. In 1998, the CourseInfo team met two principals of Blackboard LLC while pursuing a grant for adaptive testing. Shortly after the two companies joined together to form what is now known as Blackboard Inc.
PrepMe is a for-profit American company that offers online courses and tutoring for standardized achievement tests, in particular those offered by the Educational Testing Service (ETS), such as the PSAT and SAT; and the ACT offered by ACT, Inc. PrepMe also developed its Coursification platform to open its adaptive online learning platform to publishers. Over 100,000 students have used the company's programs.
Blackboard Learn is a web-based virtual learning environment and learning management system developed by Blackboard Inc. The software features course management, customizable open architecture, and scalable design that allows integration with student information systems and authentication protocols. It may be installed on local servers, hosted by Blackboard ASP Solutions, or provided as Software as a Service hosted on Amazon Web Services. Its main purposes are stated to include the addition of online elements to courses traditionally delivered face-to-face and development of completely online courses with few or no face-to-face meetings.
In the history of virtual learning environments, the 1990s was a time of growth, primarily due to the advent of the affordable computer and of the Internet.
Accordent Technologies was a company that produces software for streaming media creation and management. Its headquarters are located in El Segundo, California and has sales and development offices in Seattle, London, New York City, Atlanta, Dallas and Austin.
Kaltura, Inc. is a New York-based software company founded in 2006. It operates in several major markets: webinars and virtual events, enterprise video content management and online video platform (OVP), educational technology, and Cloud TV software, and offers products such as video portal, LMS and CMS extension, virtual event and webinar platform, and TV streaming app.
Stephen Gilfus is an American businessman, entrepreneur, architect and engineer known as "The Father of Modern E-Learning". He is a founder of Blackboard Inc. and CourseInfo LLC, where he held executive positions from 1997 to 2007. In July 2007, Gilfus started a global education think tank in Washington, D.C., focused on education innovation.
A Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) is a system specifically designed to facilitate the management of educational courses by teachers for their students. It predominantly relies on computer hardware and software, enabling distance learning. In North America, this concept is commonly denoted as a "Learning Management System" (LMS).
Elluminate Live! was a web conferencing program developed by Elluminate Inc. Elluminate "rented out" virtual rooms or vSpaces where virtual schools and businesses can hold classes and meetings. Elluminate was acquired by Blackboard Inc. and renamed to Blackboard Collaborate. Blackboard subsequently deprecated Blackboard Collaborate in favor of Blackboard Collaborate Ultra which is WebRTC-based.
Instructure Holdings, Inc. is an educational technology company based in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It is the developer and publisher of Canvas, a web-based learning management system (LMS), and Mastery Connect, an assessment management system.
Michael Chasen is an American businessman. He is a co-founder and former CEO of Blackboard Inc., a position he held from 1999 to 2012. In April 2013, Chasen co-founded SocialRadar, a technology startup company developing a location-based social app. In 2020, he co-founded ClassEDU, the maker of Class For Zoom, which aims to improve the effectiveness of Zoom-based remote learning.
Blackboard Inc., now Anthology is an American educational technology company with corporate headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida. Blackboard was known for Blackboard Learn, a learning management system. Blackboard Inc. merged with Anthology in late 2021.
Matthew Pittinsky is an American technology entrepreneur, educator and academic. He is the CEO of Parchment and a co-founder of Blackboard Inc. Pittinsky is also affiliated with Arizona State University as an assistant research professor.
Boston University Metropolitan College (MET) is one of the 17 degree-granting schools and colleges of Boston University.
