On EdTech Year in Review, 2025
Our semi-whenever listing of On EdTech newsletter - top 10, top themes, etc; you know, navel gazing
Phil Hill
December 19, 2025
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In 2025, higher ed and EdTech kept trying to tell big, clean stories - “AI will change everything,” “online is back,” “accountability is coming” - while the reality on the ground stayed messier, more operational, and (frankly) more interesting. Three themes dominated what we covered this year: accountability moving from theory to execution, the LMS market being shaped as much by balance sheets and ownership structures as by product roadmaps, and the ongoing “what’s actually happening?” fight between narratives and data.
In 2025 we published:
Free (On EdTech): 99 posts
Premium (On EdTech+): 87 posts
Total Words Written (or quoted): 282k
Total Impressions (email total opens + web views): 1.3M
Top 10 Most-Viewed Posts
This list combines email Total Opens (which includes email forwarding, which is a large percentage of our views) and Web Views.
The Other Regulatory Time Bomb (Phil · Oct 30, 2025)
Looked beyond Gainful Employment to flag other regulatory and accountability mechanisms quietly converging and potentially posing greater long-term risk for institutions, specifically focusing on Title II web accessibility rules to become live in April.
Anthology Declares Bankruptcy, Blackboard to Remain as the Core (Phil · Sep 30, 2025)
Broke down Anthology’s Chapter 11 filing and explained why Blackboard sits at the center of the restructuring, with implications for customers and the LMS market.
Anthology’s Owner Might Walk Away (Phil · Apr 22, 2025)
An early warning that private-equity incentives made continued investment in Anthology uncertain, foreshadowing later restructuring outcomes.
Anthology Finances in the News Again (Phil · Jan 23, 2025)
Cut through headline noise to translate debt, liquidity, and covenant issues into what actually mattered for institutions.
How Much Does It Cost to Build an Online Course? (Morgan · Feb 14, 2025)
Pushed back on simplistic cost estimates by unpacking how instructional design, faculty labor, technology, and scale drive wide variation.
Coursera Is Just Not That Into You (Phil · Oct 23, 2025)
A blunt assessment of Coursera’s strategy, arguing that universities often overestimate their strategic importance to the platform’s business model.
Great Expectations, Fragile Foundations (Morgan· Aug 14, 2025)
Critiqued optimistic transformation narratives that rest on weak financial, organizational, or data foundations—especially in online and workforce education.
Blackboard Goes Back to the Future (Sort Of) (Phil · Nov 19, 2025)
Broke the story of Blackboard hiring Matt Pittinsky (co-founder of Blackboard but more recently with Parchment and Instructure’s board) to be executive chairman post-bankruptcy.
State of the Higher Ed LMS Market for the US and Canada (Phil and Morgan · Feb 6, 2025)
Provided a market snapshot of vendor positioning and adoption patterns, highlighting key differences between the US and Canadian LMS landscapes.
The LMS at 30: From Course Management to Learning Platform (guest post by Matt Pittinsky · Aug 20, 2025)
Reflected on three decades of the LMS, tracing its evolution into core academic infrastructure while noting enduring limitations.
2025 Overarching Themes
LMS market: product reality + vendor strategy under pressure
This year’s LMS coverage wasn’t just “features and roadmaps,” it was the intersection of platform direction, conference signals, and major vendor turbulence.
Key posts
InstructureCon / Anthology Together / Open edX conference notes (Phil / July) — conference coverage sits as a running thread in the archive view around mid-year.
D2L Fusion Conference Notes 2025 (Morgan, Jul 29) — conference takeaways and what D2L is emphasizing in product/platform direction.
MoodleMoot Global Conference Notes 2025 (Morgan, Sep 24) — Moodle’s strategy signals and ecosystem direction from the event.
The Report of the LMS’s Death is an Exaggeration (Morgan & Phil, Dec 17) — direct pushback on recurring “LMS is dead” narratives.
Accountability and higher-ed policy: metrics meet implementation
2025 continued the shift from “accountability as debate” to “accountability as a system people will have to run,” with risk-sharing, GE-related thinking, and broader accountability mechanics showing up repeatedly.
Key posts
The Department’s Victory on Gainful Employment and What It Means for Higher Ed (Phil, Oct 8) — why GE matters structurally and what gets “cemented” going forward.
Beyond the Metric: Why Accountability Requires Institutional Leadership (Phil, Nov 26) — accountability framed as leadership/governance, not just compliance.
Three Observations on the House Accountability Proposal (Phil, Jun 16) and Three Lenses to View Risk-Sharing Program Data (Phil, Jun 18) — early looks at accountability/risk-sharing framing and data implications.
GenAI grows up
In 2025, generative AI shifted from “campus panic about cheating” to a more mature (and more disruptive) reality: GenAI is a potential workflow technology, or is it yet?
Key posts
Many Explanations are Making Premature Analysis on Recent Grad Unemployment (Morgan · Nov 25, 2025)
A workforce-focused reality check: argues that the slump in new-grad hiring is real, but that blaming GenAI as the primary driver is premature, higher ed risks solving the wrong problem if it ignores nearer-term causes while still preparing for longer-term “expertise upheaval.”
InstructureCon Conference Notes 2025 (Phil · Jul 30, 2025)
Canvas’ AI story is ambitious and increasingly “agentic,” but the post flags a credibility risk: big promises without clear delivery timelines can become the “Apple Intelligence of EdTech” problem.
Gen AI Transparency on Federal Regulations (Phil · Aug 24, 2025)
A practical case study of GenAI as an analysis tool: using NotebookLM/ChatGPT-style workflows to make sense of messy federal rulemaking inputs.
LMS at 30 Part 2: Learning Management in the AI Era (Matt Pittinsky · Sep 2, 2025)
Frames the “AI-era LMS” as potentially more agentic and more embedded in learning activity, while underscoring that institutional purpose matters (e.g., workforce-prep institutions vs. liberal arts) in how AI-enabled platforms should behave.
On Flexibility in Teaching, Learning, and EdTech (Morgan · Sep 10, 2025)
Moves the GenAI conversation past finger-pointing toward assessment as a “wicked problem”: the challenge isn’t just tools or policies, but redesigning what we measure and how we evaluate learning in an AI-saturated environment.
“What’s actually happening” in teaching/learning and institutional operations
A lot of 2025 was about puncturing simplistic narratives and focusing on the operational reality: flexibility, course availability constraints, incentives, and what “evidence” does (and doesn’t) tell us.
Key posts
The Efficacy Fetish in EdTech (Morgan, Apr 1) and The Problem with Randomized Controlled Trials in EdTech Research (Morgan, Jun 18) — research-methods skepticism applied to common “gold standard” assumptions.
On Flexibility in Teaching, Learning, and EdTech (Morgan, Sep 10) — a framing piece pushing beyond solutionism and finger-pointing.
The Course Availability Own Goal (Morgan, Sep 18) — how rigid policies/systems undercut access and throughput.
The Other Revenue Share (Morgan, Oct 16) — incentives (and perverse incentives) in the push for online growth.
Ground-level Impacts of the Changing Landscape of Higher Education (Morgan, Oct 22) — evidence-based view (Virginia CC system) of what’s changing on the ground.
Missing the Bigger Picture on Flexibility and Online Learning (Morgan, Apr 23) — critique of how “flexibility” gets interpreted in practice.
The Unsung Builders of Online Learning; IU Online (Morgan, Nov 4) — organizational capability-building view of online learning.
Thank You!
We look forward to restarting in January with new coverage.
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