Message from the CEO and the Chairman

To IMS Global Stakeholders Worldwide:

We are pleased to present the annual report for the calendar and fiscal year 2020, the 15th consecutive year of growth for the IMS Global Learning Consortium. This report features some of the highlights of the IMS community's progress during 2020. This progress has been made possible by the dedication and commitment of IMS member organizations. IMS institutional and supplier members in both the K-12 and higher education sectors fared well in 2020 during the pivot to more flexible educational delivery required due to COVID-19. IMS standards are now being implemented in most edtech products across K-12 and higher education in North America. Designing and implementing an institutional edtech strategy based on open standards interoperability resulted in greater agility, scale, and confidence in deploying best-in-class digital learning environments, resources, and tools, enabling what was most important in these times: greater focus on supporting faculty and students. The work and leadership of the IMS community are now valued more than ever. Many institutions and suppliers have noted that it is difficult to imagine how digital learning could have scaled to current levels without the many years of breakthroughs from the IMS community. As a result of our work, a much wider variety of digital learning resources and tools are accessible to more learners, creating a foundation for improving equity, agency, and mastery for all. Going forward, the continued evolution in flexible delivery modalities plus the need for diverse edtech products to work together will continue. In 2020, IMS added a net new 40 member organizations. While we could only hold one face-to-face meeting in February 2020 and are unlikely to have face-to-face meetings in 2021, the community continues to grow and thrive. We are off to the strongest start in terms of new members in our history in the first few months of 2021. Thank you for your support of our work. We hope the organizations that have yet to partake in IMS will join us in this unique collaboration as we shape the future of edtech.

—Rob Abel, Ed.D., Chief Executive Officer, IMS Global Learning Consortium —Tim Beekman, President and Co-Founder, SAFARI Montage and Chairman of the IMS Board of Directors