A study undertaken jointly by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and education technology companies Blackboard and VitalSource found that early activity with digital tools is a "strong predictor" of passing a class — even more so than the grade point average a student enters the class with. The organizations used student activity data from the university generated through Blackboard's learning management system and VitalSource's digital course materials and combined with the use of the Caliper Analytics standard from IMS Global Learning Consortium. IMS Caliper Analytics enables a variety of learning tools to return data that can be analyzed in aggregate.