I wonder what happened when Eaton's first sent out a catalogue instead of having customers come inside the store?  Was that a radical departure from the closed shop protectionistic fears of the day?  A catalogue exposed all the products and prices of the goods.  There was no haggling or under the counter trading, just acceptance of what was.

Perhaps that is what Canadian educational institutions will have to go through with LMS.  The paradigm shift from a closed shop to an open shop is not a lot different from joining the edu-mall with an open catalogue.  The accreditation doesn't change, the content will inevitably be forced to be current with quality, and the delivery will still require dedicated and savy DE educators.

So what's stopping educational institutions from moving to Canvas LMS now?  The evolution of the service is at a level of usefulness that I find hard to ignore.  The platform is open-source so future proofing is possible.

Certainly commercial lobbyist ala politicians have no doubt played a part in the digital landscape of Canada, however, as taxpayers, do you really want to be paying for software applications that are freely available and in many ways are better; rather than allocating funding towards human resources for content design, development, and delivery?

Simon Fraser University, Lethbridge College, and many others are now seeing the potential of the MOOC; and if done right, will succeed.