New Collaborations and Increased Adoption of IMS Standards Contribute to 13 Continuous Years of Growth in Membership and Revenue
LAKE MARY, Florida, 20 May 2019 — IMS Global Learning Consortium (IMS Global/IMS), the world-leading non-profit collaborative advancing edtech interoperability, innovation, and learning impact announced today record growth and revenue for the 13th consecutive year. The IMS annual report for the 2018 fiscal year is available at imsglobal.org/ar2018.
Fifty new member organizations joined IMS in 2018, with overall membership growing to 4,401 leaders representing 492 organizations. IMS members are leading educational technology product suppliers, K-12 and higher education institutions, and state education agencies that work together as equal stakeholders to accelerate an innovative and interoperable digital learning ecosystem. Over the last 13 years, IMS membership increased at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.23%. Revenue rose to over 5.4 million dollars, a CAGR of 13.24% over this same period.
“It was another outstanding year of progress for IMS Global and the work our member community is doing to enable a verified, plug-and-play edtech ecosystem that impacts millions of learners across the world,” said Dr. Rob Abel, chief executive officer, IMS Global Learning Consortium. “We look forward to continuing to grow our membership, increase adoption of our standards portfolio, and seek out opportunities to collaborate on new initiatives to improve digital education.”
IMS certification of learning platforms, apps, and tools is another key enabler to building the future digital ecosystem. At the end of 2018, the IMS Product Directory (imscert.org) listed a total of 523 active certifications across all IMS standards. The total number of certifications since the IMS conformance certification program began in 2009 reached almost 1,700.
IMS announced two significant collaborative initiatives in 2018. 1EdTech is a service that provides school districts and suppliers with the processes, tools, and support needed to ensure that digital content and district systems can connect easily and reliably beginning with the OneRoster® standard. CASE Network is a no-cost, authoring and distribution service for academic frameworks issued in digital format that makes it radically easier for districts, states, and suppliers to align learning standards and edtech products. Both projects are set to launch in 2019.
IMS created a new community-driven process to examine and share information about the data privacy supported by educational applications. The IMS App Vetting and Privacy service ensures that a minimum standard of privacy and security is met in educational apps and provides assurance that the information gathered is used responsibly. IMS App Vetting has reviewed over 500 products and vetted over 300 policies.
IMS published a major upgrade of Caliper Analytics® the leading learning analytics framework for standardizing the collection of learning activity data from multiple systems. Leading institutions leverage Caliper data to disseminate knowledge about learning tool activity to support student success initiatives.
IMS certified all of the leading digital badge issuing platforms for the Open Badges 2.0 (OBv2) standard. OBv2 enables a better educational credential by empowering individuals to take their learning with them—wherever they go—building a rich, verifiable picture of their lifelong learning and achievements journey.
Additional milestones and the most recent IMS Global achievements and results will be announced at the 2019 Learning Impact Leadership Institute, May 20-23, in San Diego, California.
About IMS Global Learning Consortium
IMS Global is a non-profit organization that advances technology to scale and improve educational participation and attainment affordably. IMS Global members are leading suppliers, institutions, and government organizations that are enabling the future of education by collaborating on interoperability and adoption initiatives. IMS Global sponsors the Learning Impact Leadership Institute; a global program focused on recognizing the impact of innovative technology on educational access, affordability, and quality while developing the people and ideas to help shape the future of educational technology.
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