Blackboard Blogs

Tips for a BbWorld First-timer

Newbie.  Freshman.   First-timer.  Whatever the name for it, there is always a first time for everyone and everything.  Are you a first-time BbWorld attendee?  Are you wondering how best to take advantage of all the resources and opportunitites at BbWorld?  How can you make the most of it?

Here are some tips for first-time BbWorld attendees:

Opening a New Door at Blackboard

Choice, diversity and experimentation are core values of educational communities.  We see this reflected in the continual experimentation with alternative course management systems at colleges and universities around the world.  Many schools have a Sakai or Moodle instance running alongside their Blackboard service.  While supportive of faculty members who want to experiment, this can create a problem for students who get lost in a fog of different systems.  To solve this problem, some institutions elect to choose a single course management solution on campus.  But that approach won’t work for everyone.

At Blackboard we’re expanding your teaching and learning technology choices.  We’re opening up the Blackboard Academic Suite and enabling connections to different course management systems through a new technology called The Learning Environment Connector, which is being developed as part of Project NG, Blackboard’s multi-year, multi-release project to deliver a next generation teaching and learning solution.  And while we believe that our course management system is the best solution for most instructors, we want you to have the ability to experiment, and to have the teaching and learning choice that you need.

Imagine a world where students go to a single URL and connect to their course regardless of which course management system it is hosted on.  Dashboards consolidate information for users from these many systems.  Administrators easily access accounts and information across these systems; thus simplifying helpdesk operations.  The Learning Environment Connector makes this world possible.

To demonstrate the power of this technology we’re working to build a connector to Sakai.  We have partnered with a university that uses Sakai and Blackboard and shares our vision.  When complete, the Blackboard Sakai connector will be available as open source to the education community.

From Christopher Columbus to Globalized Higher Education

(This entry is part of a series by Gordon Freedman, Blackboard's VP of education strategy, in which he reflects on technology and education as he travels around the world to meet with innovative education leaders and researchers, government leaders, and members of the Blackboard community who are experimenting in e-Learning and changing the education landscape.)

When the Organization for Economic and Cooperative Development (www.OECD.org) chose Santo Domingo for its site for the 2nd Global Education Forum, it struck me as unusual.

But when I recalled it was from these waters that Christopher Columbus searched in vain for a passage to India, it began to make sense.  The city’s safe harbor, first entered by the great European explorer in 1492, has been the site of centuries of global intrigue and then national independence in the mid 1800’s.  The Dominican Republic, all these years later, became the gracious host to this international gathering that looked for the new gold standard in today’s global village – education.   

It is hard to argue with an island nation that was the initial point of discovery for Europeans coming to the Americas as a venue for a global education conference in the 21st century.  In our fully globalized society today, education has clearly become the one similar resource by which all nations will measure themselves going forward.  And the OECD, a champion of economic development based on investments in the human potential of nations, is one of the very strongest organizational voices in the international arena.  It is dedicated to large-scale education improvement in both developed nation members and in its developing nation partners.

The Important Role of Open Source Software in Education

Over the past several months, there have been many articles highlighting the growth in popularity of open source software solutions in education.

Here at Blackboard, we also feel that open source plays an important role in education.  The recent incorporation of a non-profit organization called OSCELOT (the Open Source Community for Educational Learning Objects and Tools) by a group of passionate members of Blackboard’s developer community reflects this trend.

OSCELOT’s mission is to promote the development and sharing of open-source plugins and extensions for learning environments, including Blackboard Building Blocks and Blackboard PowerLinks, that allow Blackboard users and our partners to customize, enhance, integrate and extend our core LMS products using our open API architecture.

By pairing open source plugins with Blackboard’s commercially supported teaching and learning platform, we’ve seen rapid uptake of educational tools and platform enhancements that everyone can benefit from.

To date, there are over 70 projects hosted on OSCELOT’s site and over 150 known free or open-source plugins contributed by the community, which can be used today with Blackboard solutions to address a wide variety of teaching, learning and institutional priorities.

Why Blackboard ASP Became Blackboard Managed Hosting

Since my first day working for Blackboard, I have been greeted by the same puzzled expression when I tell someone which department I work in: “ASP?”

It didn’t matter whether I was talking to Blackboard users, co-workers or our partners, there always seemed to be a lack of understanding of what our hosting organization was all about.  Are we really an ASP?  If not, then what are we?  Does it really do us justice to just say we are hosts to Blackboard applications?  While we do set up and maintain the servers on which applications runs, this is such a small fraction of what we do for Blackboard users.

I’ve found one of the main reasons our clients stay with us year after year is that we provide a fully managed hosting solution.  This means we have people available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, monitoring servers, performing upgrades and troubleshooting any problems.

In addition to those more task-related duties, we have teams of engineers working on the “next big thing.”  A few of the types of experts we have working behind the scenes to improve our solutions and optimize performance include:

A Report from eLearning Forum Asia

This year BbSummit Asia was merged with the eLearning Forum Asia ("eLF2008") and held on 29–30 May in Singapore.  Over 140 delegates attended the forum, from mainland China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand and Taiwan.

The eLearning Forum Asia was created two years ago by three Blackboard clients: City University of Hong Kong, Taiwan's Feng Chia University and Singapore's Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

Following the success of BbSummit Asia last year, Blackboard was fortunate to be approached by the executives of these universities and invited to work with them to create a single event with a program that would be deeper in subject matter and broader in coverage than either event could have individually.

The theme for the forum this year was "It's a Small World After All."  For details about the program, which focused on online pedagogy and the role of leadership, see the NTU website.

The opening keynote address was delivered by Dr. Xu Erming, a professor of management and the deputy dean for the School of Graduate Studies of Renmin University of China.  His presentation was titled "Online Learning Pedagogy: Strategies and Approaches for Effectively Applying ICT to Support Learning."

Moving from Blackboard Client to Blackboard Client Manager (Reflection on BbWorld Europe '08)

By Anthony Doyle, Senior Client Manager, Blackboard

I work with Blackboard’s International Client Management Team in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and joined Blackboard back in November 2005, direct from an institution where I was responsible for the implementation of an institution-wide rollout of Blackboard software.

With those years of experience working on the user side of the Blackboard fence, I’m always excited to meet with members of the global community of Blackboard users and hear first-hand how they are using the software to educate and implementing innovative uses for their implementations.  From my time as a technologist and VLE systems manager, I can vouch for the power of community.

So, in May, I undertook an exciting drive across country, from Middlesbrough in North East England to Sunny Manchester, to join over 300 peers, colleagues and friends (and not to forget the Glasgow Rangers fans) to participate in BbWorld Europe 2008.  I have many connections still from my days as a Blackboard client, and I’m always excited to learn what the latest success stories from day-today users of the system.

My first experience of Blackboard was as a student at university.  From that experience I moved directly from using Blackboard software as a student into working with it as a technologist at a further education college, who actually implemented Blackboard software.  That student perspective stayed with me when I worked as a technologist and much of my work was based around learner-centric methodology.

After one particular session at BbWorld Europe ’08, I left the room with excitement, really thinking, “This is what it’s all about!”

Excitement in Manchester: My First BbWorld Event

By Borja Uslé, Client Manager, Blackboard

Last month I attended BbWorld Europe ’08 in Manchester.  The users conference was the first BbWorld event that I’ve been able to attend since joining Blackboard in November 2007.  And I was delighted to be a part of it.

I work as a client manager for Blackboard users located in Southern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.  Many clients in these regions traveled long distances to join BbWorld Europe; representatives from the University of Botswana came, and there were three different institutions from Turkey.  Our resellers also came from places like Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

The venue for the conference, The Palace Hotel, worked very well.  Large Blackboard banners hung in the reception area greeted everyone and made one feel welcomed.  And, despite the reputation of British weather, the weather during the conference was fantastic.

Conference participants were really excited to attend and connect with peers, and speak face-to-face with us Blackboard team members.  That was really very nice.  I had several conversations with users in and around the exhibit hall booths.

Here are three presentations given by attendees that I felt were particularly successful:

Technology Makes the World Smaller, Closer and More Connected

Watch this YouTube video clip of an e-Learning conference held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (and recorded two years ago, almost to this day), and compare how similar it is to the footage captured by a BbWorld conference attendee last year during BbWorld '07 in Boston, USA, which I discussed in a post yesterday:

If you'll be attending BbWorld '08 in Las Vegas, July 15-17, and plan to bring your video camera, please let me know at BlackboardTV@blackboard.com.  And watch for BlackboardTV crew members filming there.  During a session break we can discuss how wonderfully small, close and more connected the world is becoming because of technology -- both e-Learning and video.

Do You Have Video Footage or Photos from BbWorld Europe '08 in Manchester?

During BbWorld '07 in Boston, a conference attendee from the Netherlands captured this footage of action across the exhibit hall floor -- from the "Ask Dr. C" kiosk to partner booths to the opening reception:

The image is blurry.  The camera movement is dizzying at times.  And the sound nearly inaudible.  But I love this footage!

To be able to capture a few minutes of an experience like this, spontaneously on a mobile phone or a tiny camera, is exactly why I love technology.  And I was in the exhibit hall when this footage was shot, probably also walking around, but I saw a completely different set of events and conversations.  To be able to see this experience so easily from someone else's perspective?  Fascinating.

If you recorded video footage or took photographs during BbWorld Europe '08 in Manchester, please let me know at BlackboardTV@blackboard.com.  I'd like very much to see the spontaneous and serendipitous moments you captured, and share them with the Blackboard community via the BlackboardTV Channel on YouTube, so your peers can view them.  And maybe themselves.

Viva the camera phone!

From BbWorld in Manchester to BbWorld in Las Vegas

BbWorld Europe '08 occurred recently in Manchester, England.  Alas, I wasn't able to attend the conference, co-hosted by the University of Manchester, but learned registration was filled, 30 clients presented during the break-out sessions, and over 350 users attended, traveling from more than 26 countries, including Italy, Turkey, Botswana and South Africa.  Cool.

Our next users conference, BbWorld '08, will occur in Las Vegas, July 15-17.  Attendees are expected to travel from not just North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, but also Central America, the Caribbean, South America, Australia, New Zealand and Asia.  Very cool.

Blackboard International President Juan Lucca extends his invitation to attend:

Also, there'll be a keynote speaker in Las Vegas whom I'm very keen to hear: Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer.  Geek cool.

Facebook + Blackboard = Blackboard Sync

At BbWorld '07 in Boston, Blackboard CEO Michael Chasen announced we were going to help our clients connect with their students on their level and in a way that gets them the information they want, when and how they want it.

Today we took a big step toward that goal with the launch of Blackboard Sync, which combines Facebook with our Blackboard software.

Now, when a student is logged onto Facebook, they can use Blackboard Sync to receive a notification that there's an update or other information has been posted on Blackboard about their courses.  Receiving course information and updates through Facebook will help students be more in touch with their academic studies on a day-to-day basis.  The idea behind Blackboard Sync is to make academic information available to students wherever they are—and we know a lot of them are on Facebook.