"We would take large groups of students and divide them into three groups: a web-based group, a face-to-face group, and a blended group; and we would look at outcomes. When we looked at the data, the group that did the least well was the group with face-to-face. The group that did by far the best was the blended group. So, after one round of experimentation, this got super interesting to us. All of a sudden, we could add this kind of electronic means of knowledge transfer and suddenly really change education." Murray Goldberg, CEO of Marine Learning Systems, joins us to give insight on the evolution of learning technology.

Murray Goldberg was a tenured faculty member conducting research on the effectiveness of web-based learning in the department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia. In 1997, Murray founded WebCT, which grew to be the world's leading LMS serving 14 million students in 80 countries at 4,000 universities and colleges. WebCT sold to Blackboard in 2006 for $200M. Since then, Murray has created a new company, Marine Learning Systems, to address learning in the maritime and other skill-oriented industries. Marine Learning Systems is experiencing rapid growth and now counts among its customers more than half of the world cruise segment, as well as ferries, workboats, coast guards and others.

Goldberg has won numerous prizes including the UBC Killam University Teaching Prize, the 2000 National IWAY Award for outstanding contributions to information technology, and was named as the recipient of the New Media Hyperion award new media in IT. In 2004, Goldberg was granted an Honorary Ph.D. from Southern Cross University for pioneering work in advancing Ed Tech. globally. Also in 2004, Goldberg won the national Manning Awards foundation Principal Award, a $100,000 prize honoring the country's most outstanding innovator. Most recently, Goldberg was named one of the top 15 Canadians in digital media by Backbone Magazine.