I have been waiting for this official announcement for many months. While I was still at Abilene Christian University (ACU) early this past year I learned about this new system when ACU was informed that Perason and Google were combining forces and ACU was chosen to be a test site. At the time of this early trial the system that is now called OpenClass didn’t even have a name. Now that my colleagues at ACU are no longer bound by a non disclosure agreement I look forward to quizzing them about their experience with this new system.
Having another option to Blackboard and Moodle means we can perhaps see some true innovation in the course/learning management space. If OpenClass works as well as the rest of the Google Apps for Education suite we are all winners because the more competition there is to Blackboard (who controls over 80% of the course management space) the more choice and flexibility educators will have.
The only downside to this is the fact that OpenClass will more than likely have an initial impact on Moodle which is a free open source platform many institutions are using rather than Blackboard. While Moodle is free it really doesn’t offer much of an alternative to Blackboard because it simply mirrors Blackboards functionality and it requires a significant amount of time, effort and resources to maintain. With Google hosting OpenClass the maintenance and support issues of hosting an CMS/LMS go away.
Time will tell if OpenClass will the same postive impact on Higher Ed that Google Apps for Education have had. I know we (Concordia) will be exploring this options as soon as we can.
