According to its news release this week, the learner engagement platform Modern Campus bought DIGARC, which makes software to help students with degree planning, for the purposes of integrating their respective tools. Similar to a learning management system (LMS), a learning engagement platform (LEP) can work alongside an LMS but has cloud-based tools that allow anyone to create course materials and launch a training course. By integrating its platform with DIGARC’s course curriculum management software, Modern Campus intends to make it easier for students to navigate course catalogs and plan and personalize their degree programs.
“This is a perfect next step in DIGARC’s evolution and our ‘Connected Curriculum’ strategy,” said DIGARC CEO Richard Becker in a public statement. “Together with Modern Campus, we’ll be able to deepen relationships with our higher education partners and extend our ability to improve user experience, establish a single source of truth across campuses and support student recruitment and retention.”
In his own public statement, Modern Campus CEO Brian Kibby said the acquisition should help their clients in higher education to improve student experience with websites and curriculum planning.
“The modern learner is a savvy consumer and their expectations of higher education institutions have changed. They expect a highly personalized, Netflix-like experience. They’re primarily focused on maximizing the return on one of the most important and largest investments they’ll make — their post-secondary education,” Kibby said. “For colleges and universities experiencing decreased enrollment, they need every advantage available to attract, engage and graduate the modern learner on time.”
Modern Campus was itself the product of a 2019 merger between OmniUpdate, which made content management systems for higher education, and Destiny Solutions, which made student life cycle management software. The two rebranded earlier this year as Modern Campus, which counts over 550 higher education institutions as customers. DIGARC is the company’s second acquisition in the ed-tech space this year, the first being nuCloud, a software-as-a-service application for creating virtual tours and interactive maps of college campuses that Modern Campus bought in March.
DIGARC, founded in 2001, focuses on catalog management software to help students with degree planning and is used by almost 800 colleges and universities.
