Dear Blackboard Clients, Partners and Staff:

Fifteen years ago, my close friend Matt Pittinsky and I, not long out of college, started a company with the idea that technology could transform education. We had big ideas and lots of youthful ambition. Those dreams and that ambition grew into Blackboard – a company that today supports tens of thousands of clients around the world helping them bring teaching and learning online.

It’s been an amazing experience. I am extremely proud of the work we’ve done to date, and I’m excited about the bright future of Blackboard. After starting out as a pioneer in e-learning, we’ve expanded the company’s vision for supporting clients. We now offer a range of products and services to support education needs at all levels: from commercial to open source and from K-12 to higher education and beyond. And we will continue to make big investments in the next generation of solutions for education.

Today Blackboard is in a clear leadership position and will continue to grow and help clients in new ways for many years to come. While it has been a great privilege to lead the company for so long, the Board of Directors and I have decided that now is the right time to bring on a new CEO to help the company take the next steps to carry this vision forward.

I’m pleased to share that Jay Bhatt will join in December as Blackboard’s next President and CEO. Jay is currently President and CEO at Progress Software Corporation, a publicly traded global software company that simplifies the development, deployment and management of business applications on-premise or on any Cloud. He was previously at Autodesk, Inc. for almost 12 years, and ran Autodesk’s largest vertical business while helping that company grow to over $2 billion in revenue. Jay has an impressive background with extensive experience in the software industry. Additionally, Jay has a passion for education, which makes him a great fit for Blackboard and aligns him with the company’s mission to continue to improve and extend education globally.

In the next couple of months, I’ll be working closely with Jay, Ray Henderson, and the rest of our senior executive team to ensure a smooth transition. There will be no interruption to the work we’re doing on many fronts to support you. As you know, Blackboard has an exceptional team that is dedicated to meeting your needs.

I’d like to thank all the members of the Blackboard community – especially the clients, partners and staff that I’ve had the chance to work with over the years. We’ve done a lot to support education globally, and I’m looking forward to seeing that work continue and strengthen over time.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions at michael@blackboard.com.

Sincerely,

Michael L. Chasen

CEO

Blackboard Inc.

Globally, education is grappling with the need to put learners at the center, to engage them in and beyond the classroom.  All while doing more with less, increasing accountability and finding new funding streams.  Technology has an ever-growing role to play at the heart of education – if you can trust it, manage it, and make it your own.  The challenges are real, but so are the solutions.

Since the merger of Blackboard and WebCT, I've watched with pride the synergy created by two education companies coming together to do something bigger and better, to improve learning outcomes and enable education providers to make a true difference in their work, in the lives of their students.  Today, I'm excited to see the endeavors of the Blackboard community's labors come to fruition with the launch of Blackboard Learn, Release 9.

Driven by the demands of educators and technology professionals across and beyond the Blackboard community, Blackboard Learn, Release 9 re-imagines the use of technology to drive student achievement.  Engagement and openness are the design principles of Blackboard Learn, Release 9.

Learners need to be engaged – no matter who they are or how they learn.  The all-new Web 2.0 experience in Release 9 makes it easy to meaningfully combine information from different sources.  The addition of blogs and journals brings reflective learning to the forefront; and by integrating with the Facebook platform, we can take the learning process to students where they are – meeting their expectations.

When Blackboard and WebCT started working with developers out of Cornell University and the University of British Columbia back in the late '90s, we wanted to bring new paradigms for openness in education using the Internet.  We succeeded with our early versions of our Learning Systems, but I continually am amazed by the potential – specifically, the untapped potential – for the support of technology to impact learning for the better.

The next generation of openness is now real, with the ability to connect to other learning systems, such as Moodle and Sakai, making it easy for institutions to bring all their learning into one place.  And openness is also all about feedback: the more data students get about their performance, the better they perform.  The more feedback educators get about their performance, the better they perform.  It's a simple equation.  Blackboard Learn, Release 9 makes personal expression, group collaboration, and feedback easy, real and timely:

• The Grade Center brings teacher and student into closer dialogue
• The Notifications Dashboard gets students and educators the feedback they need, when they need it
• SafeAssign holds a mirror up to a student's citation skills, improving the art of referencing in the information age
• Students can now deepen their collaboration with the improved group tools, which bring a host of learning activities into one place

And whether you seek to collaborate in Russian, Swedish, Finnish, Brazilian-Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese or a host of other languages, or need assistance with content re-ordering through a screen-reader, Blackboard Learn, Release 9 opens those doors, as well.

While the challenges are real, so are the solutions!  Even better news?  This is just the beginning: I have an education-focused team that already has the next set of platform innovations in the pipeline for 2009, delivering yet more freedom of choice for students and education providers alike.  I can't wait to jump that curve.

Happy learning!

Over the weekend we launched the new Blackboard.com.  Web site updates aren't typically news, but in this case I want to send out a heads up because of the change in our company that the completely new site reflects.  I summarized that change in a letter on the site.  Check it out.  Short story, I hope you get a sense for our evolving mission and solutions, and how they can help you.  As well as for the more straightforward communicator we’re trying to become as an organization.

Take a look.  And if you have a second, let us know what you think.  Either through the site or tell me directly at CEO@blackboard.com.

As we begin the New Year, I’m pleased to announce we already have great news for Blackboard users: Last Friday afternoon, we signed a formal agreement to acquire The NTI Group, Inc., a leader in the mass alert and notification service industry.

This acquisition will enable Blackboard to better help institutions address several key challenges and trends within the education community, which we outlined in a press release issued today:

1. As online learning continues to grow and more institutions utilize the Internet to connect with traditional and virtual students, it is becoming increasingly important to have the capability to deliver mass communications with large populations of users across an array of technical devices;

2. In addition, it has become imperative that academic institutions have the ability to quickly and effectively communicate with their entire campus constituency in the wake of a range of school and campus incidents, severe weather and other safety concerns; and

3. Institutions are focusing on mobile-centric strategies and looking to tightly integrate their learning environments with cell phones and PDAs.

In the coming weeks, we’ll announce further details regarding the integration of NTI’s products into Blackboard’s offerings.  Additional information about the acquisition is available now, however, at www.blackboard.com/connect.

Last week we learned about the tragedy on the campus of Virginia Tech, where a shooting claimed many lives. There are simply no words to express the anguish and turmoil the entire Virginia Tech community, and the education community at large, experienced.

Virginia Tech is our neighbor and a client. On behalf of Blackboard, I offer our sincere condolences to the victims’ family members and friends, to the survivors and the larger Blacksburg community.

The strength of the Hokie spirit displayed during this past week—within the personal stories of the victims, during memorial services and candlelight vigils—has moved us greatly. Please know we stand with you in support during this extraordinarily difficult time.

Readers who would like to offer condolences, thoughts and prayers to the Virginia Tech community can do so directly on the school’s April 16 Memorial Website.

I encourage anyone able to offer financial support to visit the Web site for the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund. Blackboard will be contributing to this fund and will match donations made by our employees. The fund was created by the university to collect donations in honor of the victims and to assist members of the Hokie community during their healing process.