Recent cuts to federal travel budgets now have a considerable impact on the way federal trainers approach learning delivery within their respective agencies.  As the President calls for a heavier reliance on video conferencing and web-based capabilities to replace face-to-face training courses, federal trainers must continue to foster core competency and skill set development within their workforce.

Here’s our solution: Blackboard Collaborate, a solution that delivers highly effective and engaging online instruction, meetings, and help—anywhere, any time—across your government agency.  Blackboard Collaborate combined with Blackboard Learn mimics face-to-face learning that many federal learners have grown accustomed to- but it’s cost effective.  So if your agency is ready to deliver succession planning, streamline knowledge transition, enhance collaborative learning, reduce training costs, and/or improve mission outcomes, Blackboard Collaborate is the solution for you.

Here are some top features of the Blackboard Collaborate solution that will deliver cost-effective results for your agency:

• Web Conferencing facilitates interactive instruction, help, and meetings through an enhanced user experience.

• Voice Authoring gives you the opportunity to create engaging and effective asynchronous learning by facilitating vocal instruction, collaboration, personalized coaching, and assessment.

When combined with solutions such as Blackboard Learn, your agency will also gain the ability to assess learning outcomes in real time to increase trainee success and measure which training programs are the most effective. Explore the ways that Blackboard Collaborate can help members of your agency stay connected and remain on-task with training plans, even in the face of today’s budget cuts and travel restrictions.

The Australian National Rural Women’s Coalition (NRWC) is using the latest Blackboard Collaborate™ technology to help women in rural parts of Australia build leadership skills, network and learn better business practices. The virtual classroom environment allows the women to connect from all across the continent to engage in active learning through virtual workshops.

To learn more about this e-learning and leadership program, supported by the Australian Government, check out this story from a local Australia paper.

Everywhere you look – in after school specials, public service announcements, magazine covers, radio, and television – awareness to prevent bullying can be found.  We can help teachers reduce this sad and growing trend in the virtual classroom.

I have to admit, when I was in school, I experienced both sides of bullying.  Some classmates targeted me for riding the bus to school.  Then, at times, I regrettably found myself poking fun at less fortunate others.  Using Blackboard Collaborate features and functions we have empowered instructors to monitor the learning environments in many ways that can guard against bullying.  In fact, there are more ways than I can fit into just one blog entry.  Therefore, I would like to share with you Part 1 of a series of blog entries on the topic.  We will start with Blackboard Collaborate’s web conferencing and in future posts, I will share information about instant messaging and voice authoring features that help manage and prevent bullying.  Let’s get started with web conferencing.  Here are a few bright ideas of my own: (more…)

It’s mid-July.  We return home from our annual Connections Summit user conference, energized by the unveiling of Blackboard Collaborate 11 web conferencing, our brand new product which combines many of the best elements of Elluminate Live! and Wimba Classroom.  But despite the fact that it’s shiny, new, and clearly the best in the business, we still recognize the fact that we need to help our customers take the necessary steps to prepare themselves to take the leap forward and upgrade.  We therefore decide to take a page from the Blackboard Learn™ playbook and begin our cohort programs.

The Blackboard Collaborate 11 cohort programs (one for Elluminate Live! customers and the other for Wimba Classroom customers) began as 5- and 10-week programs, respectively, to help schools plan and execute a successful transition to Blackboard Collaborate 11.  Since neither Elluminate nor Wimba customers haved had such significant changes made to their previous synchronous products, we felt we should provide some additional aid-and-assistance along the way, while also allowing schools the opportunity to learn from each other’s experiences. (more…)