In Throwback Thursday fashion, we wanted to publish some graphics relating to global LMS usage from 5 years ago (Fall 2010). It is not a complete data set, but it captures in particular some interesting findings such as the popularity of Moodle (the yellow dots) and OLAT (the green dots) in certain countries. It also highlights the global adoption of WebCT (the blue dots) at the time. Orange is Blackboard. Light blue is Sakai. Purple is ANGEL. Magenta is “other.”

It’s interesting to ponder how much has changed even in 5 years’ time. Every blue dot, for example, is now using a different LMS, and while more than 500 use it today, none of the institutions represented here used Canvas at the time. The majority of Blackboard environments in 2010 would have been running “Blackboard Academic Suite” version 8.x and not yet “Blackboard Learn” 9.x. So though it may seem as though change in this space can be slow, progress is being made, and good things are happening. Given that EDUCAUSE was this week, it will be interesting in another 5 years to reflect on what influences initiatives such as the Next Generation Digital Learning Environment (NGDLE) have on this space.