DevDigital

Learning Management Systems (LMS) have evidently made the lives of instructors and students more engaging. However, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution in the industry. The presence of dozens of LMS providers of all shapes and sizes is indicative of this, and for many institutions it is a struggle to weigh their options. As such, they end up having to reorient themselves to the LMS offering while it ought to be the other way around. This comes as a major constraint at all levels of the LMS integration. “The market is repeating the same mistakes over and over; everyone seems to think their platform does everything other platforms don’t do. The fact is customers don’t all have the same ideas and requirements, and there is always a need for customized add-on functions and features regardless of which LMS is chosen,” says Peter Marcum, managing partner at Tennessee-based DevDigital, a company that holds a competitive edge in delivering custom solutions for LMS.

As a seasoned LMS delivery expert, DevDigital has also witnessed the changing trends in terms of the expectations of educational institutions. Improved user experience—be it for the student, teacher, or parent—from AI concepts and gamification to render courseware that is more entertaining than being plainly instructional, to prescriptive testing for students to evaluate themselves are among the platform-agnostic LMS capabilities that DevDigital offers. “What matters to us is which platform would be the best fit for the market the client intends on serving. Our first objective is to match the technology with the client’s objectives and then match those objectives with the functions, features, and outcomes of the ideal platform. We have an outstanding team of in-house designers, content curators, and software engineers to serve the needs of our clients across a multitude of industries,” adds Marcum.

We have an outstanding team of over 100 people including in-house designers, content curators, and software engineers to service client requirements

The company has been developing LMS solutions for private schools and religious organizations where parents are actively involved in the student learning process by facilitating communication with students as well as teachers. Generic LMS offerings lack customization options that would allow teachers to set the tone and level of interactions in which they communicate with the parents. Strategic relations with several universities and Christian homeschool educational material providers have opened new market opportunities for the company. Backed by technical expertise cumulated from more than ten years in the field of software development, DevDigital’s team is proficient in content creation and client onboarding, which add to the competitive facets of their LMS offering. DevDigital is in an ongoing partnership with a company that distributes educational content to prisons and jails. In a matter of two weeks, the team was able to set up an LMS demo and populate it with course material for passing a GED and made them accessible through secure tablets, which is being used in the prison by as many as 100,000 prisoners.

Marcum says that DevDigital acquires most of its LMS clientele via word of mouth. He points that many of their clients often have an incorrect notion and misled expectations for an LMS. Prior to every client onboarding, the company employs a project manager who identifies the scope of work through an interview and intensive probing. DevDigital has implemented over 1,200 projects since their inception. Looking ahead, the company strives to hire the best and brightest minds to help keep up with the demand and is banking upon its expertise and referrals from strategic partnerships to obtain more market share in the growing LMS space.