2013 has been a busy year for the Blackboard User Experience and Accessibility teams and we are only half way through the year. This year kicked off with the release of Blackboard Learn, Release 9.1 Service Pack 11, which was audited and verified by a third-party for conformance with the internationally recognized W3C WCAG 2.0 Guidelines at the AA level. This release resolved several outstanding issues with both accessibility and usability found in older releases of Blackboard Learn. Including those mentioned in a recent report comparing the accessibility of Learning Management Systems.

Shortly following the release of Service Pack 11 an updated version of the Blackboard Learn Discussion Board was released as a building block that could be installed on Service Pack 11 and higher. The new Discussion Board includes significant usability and accessibility improvements in a tool that was previously considered very challenging for users with disabilities.

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.

If you ask Blackboard employees what they like most about their job, you will most frequently hear about how enjoyable it is to work at a place that strives to make a difference in the world through enabling education. Last Friday, I was one of about 20 Blackboarders having a great time at Spring Hill Lake Elementary School for the Greater DC Cares 2011 SERVATHON. The Servathon gave us an opportunity to make a difference in a way that was a little different from our day jobs, and we had a blast doing it. And, this service day was the inaugural event for Blackboard Education Corps, a new initiative to give employees the opportunity to have a positive impact on education through volunteer opportunities in their community. Over the course of the year, every Blackboard employee will be given a full day off to participate in similar community service events.

If you find that conversational organization of your email makes your inbox a little easier to deal with, then you likely switched from your previous email client to something like Gmail. If you find that sitting high above the traffic gives you a sense of security and comfort on the road, then you are likely still driving that SUV, even with gas prices rising.  If your day begins just a bit more pleasant at the local coffee shop than the more convenient one on your morning route, you are probably still walking that extra block to go there before work, even on a busy day.

The User Experience team in Product Development is tasked with being the advocate for you, Blackboard users. So how do we do that? We ask questions, we watch you use Blackboard software, we read your enhancement requests, we read your bugs reported, we listen to your ideas, we try to replicate what you do in your Blackboard system. With every project we tackle, we aim to increase the amount of user research that serves to influence the design of what is delivered in the product. Here are the types of things we’ve done with you this year: