D2L Fusion 24 Conference Notes

ed. - July is the busiest month for LMS user conferences, and recently Morgan and I tag teamed to attend the users conferences for D2L Fusion in Toronto, InstructureCon in Las Vegas, and Anthology (Blackboard) Together in Orlando. As we did last year with our premium newsletter On EdTech+, we would like to avoid duplicate content, and to do so we are publishing our LMS conference coverage with free content above a paywall break followed by content for premium subscribers. This post covers D2L Fusion.

Update 7/23: I mistakenly referenced eLumen as an Instructure acquisition when I meant EesySoft.

Two weeks ago, I attended D2L Fusion in Toronto (which won for the best LMS conference coffee availability). It was the largest D2L Fusion yet, boasting over 1,500 attendees. As I was doing research for this post, I noted that last year’s conference post intro could apply this year.

The primary changes that I would add to this description to make it apply this year:

• The big recent wins have been in Hawai’i, the Netherlands, and Ohio.

• D2L’s AI strategy is more clear now and packaged as Lumi.

The new stuff: Content, content, content

Before we get to AI, it is worth describing D2L’s core product enhancements. And by core, I do not just mean Brightspace the LMS. You can read more of the official releases for D2L here, but I’ll highlight what I consider the notable features or tools.

The key strategic focus for D2L could be summed up as product differentiation around increasingly interactive content creation capabilities aimed at improving student enagement. The company’s executives believe that the Covid pandemic showed that digital education (for online, hybrid, and classroom-augmentation) is a fact of life, and the time is now to make the learning content more engaging. Yes, D2L’s primary competitors also have additional product lines around the LMS (e.g., Parchment and credentials for Instructure, SIS and CRM for Anthology), but neither has as much of a direct focus on extensions of the LMS as does D2L.

Creator+

As described in the past two years, the company has released Creator+ as an add-on tool set to make it easier to create interactive content without needing third-party tools. This short video gives you an idea of the content types now available.

H5P

In parallel, the biggest news of the conference was that D2L has agreed to acquire H5P, a provider of HTML5 interactive content creation that is increasingly becoming the standard, at least outside of the US.

After I shared that post, founder and CEO John Baker pointed out that a combination of names would include “25”, which is appropriate for the company’s 25th year in business.

D2L plans to keep H5P as an LMS agnostic platform, but with closer integration to Brightspace. This strategy aligns with recent acquisitions by D2L competitors (meaning there is precedence of actual LMS agnoticism). For example, Ally was increasingly the market leader in accessibility tools before Blackboard (now Anthology) acquired it, and that product continues to be available for all LMSs. The same could be said about Instructure’s acquisition of the Learn Platform and EesySoft (rebranded as Impact) - still LMS agnostic but with deeper integrations with the parent company.

Brightspace-native content

It is also worth noting that D2L is improving its video capabilities, where instructors can add video notes anywhere the Brightspace editor is available, and video assignments can be made for students to complete. I’m trying to avoid AI in this section, but it is worth noting that D2L is adding the capability to automatically add chapters and video transcripts.

Finally, D2L is in the midst of pushing a New Content Experience (NC), which the redesigned WYSIWYG to be deployed throughout Brightspace. Client institutions have the option to enable NCE as opposed to using the Classic Content Experience. I believe that NCE was first available in late 2022, but I am not 100% sure on that.

Content: Put it together?

What is not clear yet (largely due to the H5P deal just being announced) is whether and how Creator+ and H5P and Brightspace might align into a comprehensive platform strategy. More on that below.

Beyond content

Beyond interactive content, D2L is also betting on an industry-wide move towards competency-based education, or at least mastery learning in general. Internal to the Brightspace LMS is a new Master View to the gradebook.

Another add-on product (as in, licensed separately) is Achievement+, which is designed to make it easier for educators to track student performance in a mastery- or competency-based context.

The new stuff: AI

Last year we noted the approach that D2L appeared to be taking with generative AI.

This year is more of the same, but more expansive and available. And with a new brand: D2L Lumi.

The formative assessment tool is generally available, and D2L has expanded the types of content that course designers and instructors can choose as the basis for the assessments.

• Last year it appeared the initial approach was more for copy and paste within a course page, but this year the tool can also be based on video, PDF documents, slides, and other content types.

• And Lumi also has a parameter (for each assessment) from Bloom’s taxonomy levels.

There is also a Brightspace Virtual Assistant chatbot that is designed to help answer student and instructor questions.

D2L’s plans are to embed more and more point solutions using generative AI throughout Brightspace, Creator+, Achievement+, and Performance+.

It is important to note that there will be additional costs from generative AI usage. What I like about D2L’s strategy is that it acknowledges that that much of the costs of the new AI features will need to be monetized. Some usage will be embedded in the Brightspace LMS, some will be monetized by the sale of the add-ons, and some will be paid on a usage basis (per token or per student).

The big question about Add-On Strategy

Overall, D2L’s continued work on its products and services is consistent with past direction and appears valuable. But there is one big question I have, namely about the Add-On Strategy of pushing so much development to additional products as an upsell.

To put this in context, however, let me share my heretical thoughts. The LMS market is underpriced, with the amount of value provided by the primary vendors far exceeding the prices paid by institutions. Roughly speaking, LMS vendors charge $15 per student per year for an LMS license. $15 for what is essentially THE virtual learning environment (VLE in UK speak) in which students and educators do so much of their work. Can you name another system where each end user might spend an hour or more per day, or at least visit multiple times per week, throughout a year and pay this small amount?

The net effect in my opinion is that these low prices represent a problem for customers. It is difficult to break even in the LMS market, and the academic LMS market has a finite size. Because of this, LMS vendors are essentially forced into seeking additional revenue sources. Instructure Bridge to enter the corporate learning market, for example. These efforts are often a distraction from and a burden to the support of the primary product that customers need.

Why are these prices so low? I think it is a systemic issue that arose from LMS origins as a non-mission-critical and even optional system in the early 2000s. Today, it would be very risky for any LMS company to unilaterally charge a lot more so that they could focus on their core products and their core markets more effectively.

OK, back to D2L. D2L’s add-on strategy clearly is intended to provide a method to overcome this market pricing weakness - increase product scope without raising core LMS product pricing. I get why they are doing this.

But there are risks.

• I know of at least two colleges / universities that did not evaluate Creator+ as their purchasing departments wanted an apples-to-apples comparison across vendors. No add-ons even though Creator+ clearly had features that the school could use.

• Furthermore, there is a risk of customers perceiving that more and more efforts are moving towards add-on products and not in the core LMS.

• Making this choice riskier is the lack of clarity from D2L executives. During my interviews at the conference, I asked from an educator’s perspective, where does Brightspace content creation end and Creator+ begin? And is H5P in parallel to Creator+ or a future combined strategy? The problem is that I got at least three different answers to that question. D2L will really need to improve its messaging to help customers understand whether they need each add-on and why they should pay more.

The question I have is whether D2L’s choice of strategy will work in the market. While I did hear from several conference attendees of their concerns about the add-on strategy, it was not an overwhelming issue. I sympathize with the need to deal with low pricing while trying to innovate with new features, but is this the right strategy and has D2L thought it through fully?

D2L execs have shared information on specific college and university wins that convince me that the products are real with initial adoptions. But not to the point that the long-term strategy will need. At least yet.

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