Higher education institutions are realizing the benefits of “buying local”—colleges and universities can use eProcurement applications in support of local vendors and economic inclusion, and to spur development in their region.
Two standards efforts from the IMS Global Learning Consortium gained steam last week during Educause with support announcements coming from a number of high profile vendors, including SunGard Higher Education, Oracle, Jenzabar, Pearson, and Desire2Learn. IMS is a non-profit organization that develops interoperability standards for education technology.
Higher ed vendor Datatel gave a sneak peek of its campus-oriented mobile application at Educause 2009 last week.
Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN will be working with SunGard Higher Education to convert the institution's student success software into a packaged product. Signals, developed by Purdue, monitors students' behavior patterns and academic performance to determine if they're at risk of earning a low grade and allows faculty to intervene with suggestions on actions they can take to help students improve their grades.
The University of Utah has implemented a Web-based academic planning tool from redLantern as part of a revamped graduation planning system.
By leveraging technology, the 130,000-student Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana has managed to keep education affordable while managing a staggering 45 percent growth rate over the last two years.
Moodlerooms, a Moodle service provider, has released a data exchange tool and announced two new programs: a partnership with the Cisco Entrepreneur Institute and a new partner program for the development of plugins.
Morton College, a community college in Cicero, IL near Chicago, has hired Datatel to implement a portfolio of applications to address the entire student lifecycle--from recruitment to alumni relationships.
Auburn University has licensed project portfolio management software from Skire to provide real-time information for capital program management.
SunGard Higher Education has signed two universities as new customers. Tiffin University in Tiffin, OH has licensed PowerCampus Unified Digital Campus (UDC), an enterprise resource planning system for higher education institutions. James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA has selected SunGard HE's Advance solution to replace its existing advancement application and create a self-service environment for donors.