During the flight to my recent research conference, I was listening to a randomly selected educational podcast and encountered a description of NUVVO. I made a note to investigate this product when I returned home and had some time. Here is my comment.
I would describe Nuvvo as a CMS (course management system). At the low end, Nuvvo is a free service allowing anyone (a stated goal is to “bring out the teacher in all of us”) to build an online course and offer it to “learners.” The free version limits course authors to 25 MB of content. The free version also contains advertisements. If you wish to explore the capabilities of this service, there is a five minute screencast that explains core features.
I think this is a significant and interesting development. It is probably too early to speculate about broad topics such as what the opportunity to offer a free or inexpensive educational content management service might mean. Will ventures such as this challenge the place of traditional educational institutions in serving nondegree seeking students? Will such services challenges companies such as lynda.com or atomiclearning.com that provide specialized training? Will educators in K-12 settings use such products to extend classroom experiences?
Exposure to this service reminded me of the efforts of some of my University of North Dakota colleagues to develop a CMS product (HTMLeZ). University ventures have contributed much to the field of technology (e.g., the original Mosaic browser), but I wonder if such projects should be approached with a commercial focus. Sometimes a commercial opportunity emerges, but I think this cannot be the reason research and development projects are undertaken. Alternatives to the high end commercial products (e.g., Blackboard) are needed, but it is unclear how such alternatives will emerge. Will new ideas come from small commercial startups, from open source initiatives (e.g., Moodle), or from companies such as Nuvvo.
