Couldn’t get enough of our summer tour?  Well then you’ll be excited to learn that those of us who work on the career college team here at Blackboard are ready to continue growing our expertise and meeting others in the field by attending career college conferences throughout this fall.  Attending these conferences allows us to stay on the cutting edge of the career college sector and to share our passion for online learning and collaboration with others who understand the important role that career colleges play in the professional and higher education worlds. Will you be joining us at…?

California Association of Private Postsecondary Schools (CAPPS) Annual Conference October 12-14 San Diego, CA Visit us at Booth #3 The California Association of Private Postsecondary Schools (CAPPS) is the only California State Association representing the many diverse kinds of Private Postsecondary Schools in California.  This year’s CAPPS conference will focus on the compliance, legislative, and regulatory issues that impact the career college sector.

 

EDUCAUSE Annual Conference October 18-21 Philadelphia, PA Visit us at Booth #427 or join us at our corporate session Blackboard is proud to be a Platinum Partner of EDUCAUSE – a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology. Whether your focus is on administration, teaching and learning, information technology infrastructure, information systems, cybersecurity, policy, library systems or information technology leadership, there’s something at the annual conference for you.

On June 1, CIO named Blackboard partner, Alta Colleges Inc., as one of its 100 winners for 2011. According to CIO.com, a preeminent publisher serving Chief Information Officers and other IT leaders, this year’s winners show how IT organizations can transform business with technology innovations that propel the enterprise toward a more profitable future. Alta Colleges, the parent company of Westwood College and Redstone College, received the honor because of its “Power of One” vision, which the company implemented in order to become the premiere educational institution to seamlessly combine in-person and online learning for its students.

As Alta’s technology partner, Blackboard played a role in the development and integration of the systems. Read more about the honoree and how they qualified for CIO 100 here.

At Blackboard, responding to client feedback remains an integral part of our service to our clients. That is why Blackboard’s recent release of Service Pack 6 improves existing features on the Blackboard Learn™ platform, as well as introduces new features, including:

• Interactive Rubics – This is a vital tool for efficiently and consistently evaluating and providing feedback to students.   Whether you need a rubric to help manage essay responses, open-ended answers, or collaborative submissions to a wiki or blog assignment, the Interactive Rubrics tool creates a simple, flexible process that is integrated directly into your normal grading workflow.
• Needs Grading View – Grading, processing, and updating is far easier now. Service Pack 6 now includes gradable blogs, wikis, journals and discussion board activity. Students are instantly notified, so you can influence performance in real time.
• Timed Assessment – Now you can save and submit automatically when the timer expires, or allow the assessment to continue beyond the allotted time.

We always want to ensure that students receive the same, if not better, quality and effectiveness through online education that they receive through a traditional classroom. That’s where the nonprofit organization Quality Matters comes in.  They provide a faculty-centered, peer review process that is designed to certify the quality of online and blended courses. Blackboard is proud to announce a new partnership with Quality Matters to promote effective practices in online education.  What does that mean for you?  Blackboard Consulting Services (SM) staff will be trained by Quality Matters and will offer support in both faculty development and course design. In fact, new offerings are already available today and include the QM Program Overview and Applying the QM Rubric training.

Well, it’s not quite as big as the Lady Gaga tour, but representatives from the career college sales and marketing teams will be hitting quite a few industry events this summer.   Not only are these conferences great for meeting others in our field who share our passion for online collaboration and learning, but also help us keep on top of where the career college industry is heading so we can better meet those demands. Will we see you at…?