The product management and user experience teams at Blackboard make it our primary goal to listen, constantly seeking out how we can be of service.

We’ve heard about the struggle for some educators to keep up with their active learners; we’ve also seen the scrutiny that is applied when institutions are faced with retention goals; we know the value that our ANGEL instructors are enjoying from the WhoDunIt report. All this and more led us to an investment in giving educators a tool to that made spotting the risks simple, so they can spend their time working with students to help them improve.

Over 330 customers helped us achieve the final design of the Retention Center. Members of the Blackboard Idea Exchange responded to surveys about how they assess risk and even what to name this feature. Instructional Designers talked with us about the conversations they have with the faculty members on their campuses as they help them deal with student retention challenges. Instructors talked with us about their needs, and spent time usability testing the details of the design itself.

In our final testing, the words most commonly selected by instructors to describe the feature were: organized, customizable, desirable, relevant, motivating, and empowering. Those last two really made an impact on us; we knew this feature was going to help educators. After one professor tested the feature she commented, “It motivates me to think about how I can help the students improve and succeed. I want to use it.”

Are you an educator? Get motivated. Be empowered. Check out the new Retention Center in Blackboard Learn. We know you’ll love it.

Did you help us design the Retention Center? Give us a shout out on Twitter! Want to help us in the future? Make sure you’re signed up for the BIE.

Just a few years ago, the “smart money” for school districts was on 1:1 computing where schools issued each student a laptop. While there is a role for 1:1 initiatives, increasingly the dialogue has evolved to bring-your-own-device (BYOD), which focuses on the use of student-owned mobile devices, and for good reason. Research shows that “active learners” (students who have grown up with technology and expect it to be readily available) want to bring their own devices to school – and are driving changes in mobile phone use policies.

Blackboard Inc. and Project Tomorrow’s Speak Up National Research Project found that in the fall of 2010, nearly 50 percent of middle and high school students said they carried some type of smartphone – a 47 percent increase from fall 2009. The National School Board Association found that 63 percent of students use mobile devices in schools, even when prohibited.

But what does an effective BYOD policy look like? And how are districts overcoming the biggest challenges of mobile adoption: equity and access?

I’m learning a lot from the innovative schools and administrators Blackboard works with – educators who are successfully leveraging technology to enhance learning experiences for their students. They first tackle the real issue of how they want to use technology to improve teaching and learning. As a result, they create a clear strategy before making a purchase or developing a policy. Here are some effective practices from clients who went down the BYOD route.

Getting Started

If a school decides to adopt BYOD, a further challenge lies in finding the budget to not only to get a program off the ground, including bandwidth for school buildings and devices for students who don’t have them, but to maintain it. Several schools are overcoming this hurdle by seeking donor and government support according to Education Week’s Mobile Learning Costs Add Up report:

• Through donated funds, St. Marys City School System in St. Marys, Ohio received free smartphones for six classes of 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th graders and pays for broadband service and software licensing from the local provider. New phones are provided each year and the district expects the cost to drop as more students participate. This arrangement saved approximately $60,000 in startup costs by relying on the service provider’s infrastructure.

• Many schools turn to E-Rate funding, a program for discounted telecommunications services from the Schools and Libraries Division of the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC), a division of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The program provides 20 to 90 percent discounts for services based on location and need.

Student Preference

After forming a stable and effective BYOD policy, working with students’ technology preferences can be another challenge; today’s active learner wants more control over the education experience. Once you open the door to BYOD, you’re also inviting various experience levels using different devices, applications and technology systems.

Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland, Ca. relaxed its requirements for what applications students can use to complete assignments. For example, both PowerPoint (for PC/Android-based devices) and Keynote (for Mac/iPads) can be used for presentations. The school has found that students are more productive when they can make their own choices, as long as instructors can view and grade the end product.

One of the hardest adjustments for students transitioning from a traditional classroom to an online environment is feeling connected to their teacher. Many times in online courses students are a username while instructors become virtual computers responding back to questions and grading projects. But, this doesn’t have to happen with a few key tricks to creating an environment where online teachers become real.

Here are three simple tips:

Tip 1: Develop a sense of connection between yourself and the students early on in the course through an introduction discussion. Have students post about themselves in discussion boards or blogs to the rest of the class encouraging them to respond to each other. (Don’t forget to include some background questions that relate to the course in this discussion.) As the instructor, the biggest way to start that connection is personalizing your replay to each student, instead of just a cookie cutter response.  To get the thread started, post about yourself with some personal information (your interests, favorite book, etc). Offering personal information will help students connect with you and make it so you aren’t a robotic, online teacher.

The world of education seems to be amidst a sea change, and a full list of people that are making an impact on education would be infinite.  However, we couldn’t resist the opportunity to list just a few of our favorite folks in education in 2012 (in no particular order).

1. Michael Chasen

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first.  Michael Chasen, the co-founder and CEO of Blackboard steps down at the end of the year, but we can’t forget his pioneering work to build Blackboard to the organization that it is today and his contributions to the ed-tech community over the past 15 years. While we’ll miss him walking our halls, we know this isn’t the last we’ll hear from him.

2. Sal Khan

Sal Khan is getting a lot of attention (Time’s Top 100 Most Influential People) for offering his world-class instructional videos for free to anyone, anywhere.  This recent Forbes article headline says it all – “One Man, One Computer, 10 Million Students:  How Khan Academy is Reinventing Education.”  Watch the video below for highlights from his closing keynote at our BbWorld conference this past summer!

3. The Active Learner

We can’t forget to acknowledge all of the students who are driving change and technology adoption from the student level.  As our recent video tells the story, these learners best represent the future of education and are rapidly growing in numbers and force.

4. Anant Agarwal

Agarwal is the President of EdX, a nonprofit start-up from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which The New York times reports had 370,000 students this fall in its first official courses.  Yes, it’s a MOOC.   Agarwal is leading the way in open education through free online courses from top universities.

5. Curtis Bonk

Dr. Curtis Bonk, a revered e-learning expert and Professor of Instructional Systems Technology in the School of Education at Indiana University, taught our first ever MOOC on our CourseSites platform.  The MOOC, applauded by Joshua Kim of Inside HigherEd, offered professional development to fellow instructors on improving motivation, retention, and engagement within blended and online courses.

6. Eric Sheninger

When not busy with his position as Principal of New Milford High School located in Bergen County, NJ, Sheninger is a vocal leader in the use of social to better engage students, educators, and other stakeholders. He maintains personal blog, A Principal’s Reflection, tweets to over 30,000 followers as @NMHS_Principal, and provides frequent contributions on Huffington Post.

7. Jessie Wooley-Wilson

Formerly of Blackboard, Woolley-Wilson is now President, CEO, and Chairman of the Board at DreamBox Learning. According to Forbes, in an article where she was recently named one of their Top 15 Classroom Revolutionaries, her adaptive learning technology has provided over 50 million online lesson minutes over the past 12 months, both privately and in schools in 47 states.

8. Adam Braun

Inspired by a trip to India in 2008 when he handed out his first pencil, Adam Braun, founded Pencils of Promise, a non-profit that builds schools and trains teachers in the developing world. Since his organization began, his staff has delivered more than 4 million instructional hours to kids around the world. Oh, and he was recently named to Forbes 30-Under-30 in 2012. Check out his organization that is doing lots of good: @pencilsofpromis.

9. Diane Auer Jones

This former Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education is using her voice as Vice President for External and Regulatory Affairs for Career Education Corporation (CEC) to highlight the importance of accountability in higher education. Jones advocates for a “single definition” in education through a rethinking of accountability and student success across institution types, as the distinctions between traditional schools and career or vocational institutions is starting to blur.

Our #10 falls more in the category of “One Watch in 2013,” but here’s why…

10. Jay Bhatt

The new CEO of Blackboard formally took the reins just barely two months ago, but is gearing up to take Blackboard to the next level. Bhatt has exceptional experience in the software industry, but more importantly, is strongly committed to excellence and innovation for Blackboard in the coming years.

 

As another year comes to a close here at Blackboard, we want to share some of our readers’ favorite blog posts from 2012.  You clicked, you shared, you commented.  Here’s what got the most attention:

• Coming NOW to a school near you: The Active Learner: A blog post showcasing our new animated video that illustrates the voice of an Active Learner and the future of education.

• A Teaching Strategy with Success Stories: The Flipped Classroom :  A teacher turned Blackboard employee tells her story of moving into a “Flipped Classroom” model.