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Washington DC based Blackboard today announced the acquisition of Bogota based Moodle solutions provider Nivel Siete. By merging, the two companies expect to be able to offer more services and solutions to organizations that leverage Moodle, and support a greater number of learners to achieve their educational goals.

Moodle is a free, open source software learning management system (LMS) that allows educators to relatively easily build electronic course materials and entire courses for use in traditional classroom or distance learning environments, such as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course), and other online options. Similar to the operating paradigm of content management systems (CMS) such as WordPress, Moodle uses themes and plugins to allow learning sites to be customized without programming skills. Like WordPress, Moodle is also built in the PHP programming language.

Above photo: Screenshot of Moodle LMS demo site (credit below)

Nivel Siete offers a variety of learning solutions, hosting, support and consulting services that help organizations succeed in their teaching and learning initiatives, especially those that focus on the use of e-learning for talent management and training. Headquartered in Bogotá’s Usaquen business district, the company serves over 200 customers in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Honduras and the Dominican Republic.

“We are excited to join forces with Blackboard and help learners and organizations be successful,” said José Diáz, CEO at Nivel Siete. “By working together with Blackboard we will be able to enhance the range of solutions and services we provide to institutions and businesses across Latin America. The local Moodle community will benefit from this acquisition, as it will open up new opportunities to share knowledge and best practices.”

Today’s announcement marks the latest investment made by Blackboard in open source after the recent acquisitions of Remote-Learner UK and X-Ray Analytics technology. Since officially joining the open source community in 2012, Blackboard has been contributing to Moodle with code, testing, platform integrations and bug fixes. It has also supported many community gatherings across the world.

“The addition of Nivel Siete to the Blackboard family testifies to our commitment to open source,” said Matthew Small, senior vice president and managing director, international at Blackboard. “We are seeing strong momentum for our open source solutions and in particular for Moodlerooms, with the addition of more than 80 new customers around the world in the last few months and significant growth in Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Brasil. Our open source solutions play an integral part in our strategy and we will continue to support their growth. I am thrilled to work together with the team at Nivel Siete and improve the educational experience for learners in Latin America.”

Photo credit: “1 MyHomeExample” by Software: Moodle – Lead Developer: Martin Dougiamas Other Contributors: https://moodle.org/dev/contributions.php Content: Creator: Mary Cooch – Publisher: Mary Cooch – Contributors: Christian Cooch. All course content can be found and referenced at Moodle.net with all authors, publishers and contributors clearly listed. This content is made available as Open Education Resources – http://school.demo.moodle.net/. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

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About the Author

Loren Moss is the founder and publisher of Finance Colombia. He has over 20 years of international business experience, including over a decade of experience in securities, insurance, and commercial real estate, at the institutional and international level.