Abstract: Learning Management Systems, Educational App Stores, Repositories, and Analytics – An Ecosystem Approach

The idea of a “Next Generation Digital Learning Environment” (NGDLE) is now several years old and while the commercial products seem to be happy with the status quo of a monolithic LMS with mostly-proprietary integrations, the Apereo open source communities are adopting this new model across the board.  Apereo is showing the path to the NGDLE by moving from a single LMS product (Sakai) to a situation where educational needs can be met from any number of open source projects like Tsugi, Equella, Open Learning Warehouse, Xerte, and others.  Much like Sakai’s “interoperability first” approach in 2004 radically changed the educational technology marketplace, Apereo’s NGDLE efforts in 2018 are laying the groundwork that will dramatically transform the educational technology market for the next decade.  The exciting part of this effort is that there are already production-ready open source projects that allow us to explore the next generation ecosystem in action to begin the process to move toward a truly next generation experience in educational technology.

Submitted to: JaSakai 2018