Dive Brief:

• Cloud storage service Dropbox has announced an integration partnership with educational software provider Blackboard, according to a report from Course Merchant.
• Under the agreement, Dropbox will become the "default sharing and storage option" for Blackboard Learn, Blackboard's primary e-learning platform for both educational institutions and business organizations. With this added functionality, users will be able to use Dropbox to work, edit and submit shared documents. Instructors can use the same platform to distribute course materials.
• Per the report, Blackboard Learn has reached a count of 100 million users, and earlier this year, Dropbox offered its first education-specific product offering storage and compliance solutions. A Blackboard representative quoted in the article said the integration "will enable students and instructors to use our strong learning management technologies alongside their collaboration platform of choice."

Dive Insight:

Over the last several months, we've seen plenty of large companies align their services with learning management platforms, like LinkedIn's purchase of Lynda.com. The learning market is big business, so it's not surprising that Dropbox has partnered with one of the leading LMS, Blackboard, to encourage students to make use of it's free and paid file-sharing and collaborative document management services. It's certainly going to give other document sharing applications a run for their money.

Companies that are already using Dropbox for file-sharing and data storage can take advantage of this by choosing Blackboard for corporate learning and MOOC development. The Blackboard platform is friendly for building courses, particularly instructor-led training modules and learning communities. So too, e-learning is about content management, under SCORM rules. But, will companies switch from other popular LMS as a result of this partnership? That remains to be seen.