Company History

The Distributed Learning Workshop was founded in 2000 by the Midwest Higher Education Commission (MHEC). Bernard Gifford, who conducted the study that lead to the Workshop’s establishment, was asked by MHEC to serve as the organization’s founding President, CEO, and Chief Instructional Officer. Following a change in leadership and its priorities, in 2004, MHEC and the leadership of the Workshop decided that the Workshop should be free to pursue partnerships with colleges and universities outside the Midwest. This change made it possible for the Workshop, whose software development staff has always been based in the San Francisco Bay Area, to enter into a series of collaborative development projects with the Office of the President of the University of California. These collaborative projects resulted in the development of Learning Conductor.