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The BbWorld 2012 Conference will focus on five key themes that matter to you: Social Learning, Digital Content, Technology Adoption, Mobility and now Analytics in Action. I am pleased to say that Ellen Wagner, Partner and Sr. Analyst, Sage Road Solutions LLC, and Executive Director, WCET will be speaking on the topic of Analytics in Action.

Your institution collects data from learners to some degree. But, how do you turn that data into actionable grounds to improve learning? Join Ellen Wagner Ph.D. at her Feature Session “Making Learning Analytics Matter in the Educational Enterprise” and discover how analytics can be used to promote personalization, convenience and consistency in all facets of the online lives of your students.

This session will take a deep dive into applying statistics analyses to help you make better, more informed decisions on teaching and learning.  You will also look at the student road-map and see how analytics techniques can be used in the classroom to improve engagement and motivation.

We know costs can add up when it comes to attending a conference out of town and you need to justify the expense to your boss. Since we want to make sure you don’t miss out, here are our tips for getting to YES on BbWorld!!

1.)    Plan Ahead – Select which keynotes, panels, and meet-ups speak most directly to your work and professional goals, and then show that specific agenda to your boss. This year BbWorld has five themes that hot topics in Education right now: Digital Content, Mobility, Analytics in Action, Technology Adoption and Social Learning. To go even further, identify some people you’d like to connect with and offer to set up meetings with them while you’re there.  Your boss will see you mean business, and you’ll be ready to go when you arrive.

2.)    Offer to Present What You Learn – Once you attend BbWorld, you will be well informed on the latest and greatest in education technology, but what about your colleagues?  Offer to present session recaps and key takeaways at a future staff meeting so everyone can benefit from your attendance. And of course, don’t forget to share a write up of what you learned at BbWorld for your school or organization’s blog or newsletter!

3.)    Social Media Visibility & Engagement – Not only will you and your boss know you’re getting the most out of BbWorld, but so will the rest of the world.  Tell your boss how you’ll embrace Twitter, Foursquare, YouTube, and other social networks to be a part of the conversation, grow your organization’s social media presence, and make new connections so you can continue the dialogue after the conference.

4.)    Build New Best Practices – Technology moves fast and what’s the latest fad in learning one year can be the must-avoid learning trend the next.  In order to be your best at your job, you need to be among the best.  We’ll make sure you have immediately applicable takeaways, make valuable connections, and make your trip to BbWorld an investment, not an expense! For example, this year BbWorld will have a Digital Content Upgrade Center so that you can talk to experts on the spot on how to incorporate our newest technologies at your institution.

5.)    Be enthusiastic! – Your energy and interest needs to come through in whatever form of communication you use to make the request.  Be yourself, but be the ‘yourself’ that conveys that doing your best at work means getting out of your usual environment sometimes and making that most of that time.

I met Paul Lefavi at BbWorld three years ago, so it’s only fitting that he would share his reasons for attending BbWorld 2012 with me and the rest of the ANGEL community.  Since our first meeting, I have relied on Paul’s perspective many times and appreciate his involvement in the ANGEL community programs.  Thanks, Paul, for contributing your thoughts, and I look forward to seeing you in New Orleans! Guest post by Paul Lefavi, Director of eLearning Technology, Indian River State College As I make plans to attend BbWorld 12 in New Orleans, I have been asked by a couple of colleagues why I make a point of going to this conference each year. Is it the fun and exciting places, Orlando, Las Vegas, and now the Big Easy, where the conference has been held the past few years?  Is it just the allure of getting out of town?  While both reasons would most likely crop up in a bulleted list of motives to attend, BbWorld is so much more than a few days away at a fun destination.

Register for the Enrollment Track at BbWorld and save 50% on your BbWorld Pass! All Higher Ed Executives know that student recruitment and retention are top priorities. And the solutions that address these main concerns are not “one size fit all”. Because Blackboard has recognized the importance of focusing on Executives responsible for enrollment, admissions, recruitment and student retention, there is a track solely dedicated to these topics at BbWorld 2012. The client-led sessions in the Enrollment Track (ELT) will spotlight:

1. Increasing enrollment yield to meet financial demands and growth of online programs.
2. Utilizing enrollment analytics to improve enrollment yield and reduce cost per enrolled student.
3. Employing social and mobile communication channels to target increasingly connected and non-traditional students.
4. Scaling operations while improving prospective student service, without exploding the enrollment budget.
5. Intercepting at-risk students with predictive analytics and proactive services/professional outreach.
6. Handling the Financial Aid workload increase while bringing the service experience into the 21st century.

Register now for the Enrollment Track and receive the full benefits of BbWorld for $450 – more than 50% off the regular registration rate! It is your opportunity to learn about how other Executives in similar situations are dealing with the pressures of Enrollment at their institution. Application deadline is 5/18/2012. Registrations must be received in order to secure your spot.

Please join me in welcoming to the Blackboard Analytics solution set our latest innovative contribution to the use of data across educational institutions, Blackboard Analytics for Learn. This new solution provides rich, easily accessible data to measure and explore student LMS activity, course design and usage, and student educational outcomes, on demand and over-time, by integrating Blackboard Learn and student information system data. At the recent Southern California Technology in Education Conference, I was asked to respond to several questions concerning analytics and the LMS: What are the barriers to better analytics around the LMS? And, what can we do across the higher education community to encourage better progress in developing LMS analytics tools? One of the primary barriers I cited was the traditional difficulty with which institutions are able to gain user friendly, attributionally rich, longitudinal data from their mission critical systems such as the student information and learning management systems. Our efforts and solutions within Blackboard Analytics are targeted exclusively at overcoming this barrier. To contribute to the educational community of practice for how LMS analytics can develop, we are pleased to make today’s announcements regarding Blackboard Analytics for Learn. As my colleague Dr. Deb Everhart blogged earlier this week, analytics from the rich activity and performance data within the LMS highlights great formative promise toward improving student academic performance and the management of the LMS. Advised by our client development partners, we’ve made specific design choices to contribute to this promise. For example, we’ve pre-built integration with the leading student information systems to ensure dimensional analysis associated with student grades, demographic attributes, and institutional departments. As with other Blackboard Analytics solutions, Blackboard Analytics for Learn extends our core approaches to both pre-built and rich data analyses and dashboards, as well as highly extensible analytics data model customization. Finally, implementation and end-user access to the Blackboard Analytics for Learn data model remains rapid and easily achievable. Last year at BbWorld, Ray Henderson announced our goal of introducing Blackboard Analytics for Learn. In reaching this goal, we are fortunate to have been advised by a group of clients whose teaching and learning through Blackboard Learn contributes greatly to their institutional objectives. In mid-2011, we launched a Product Development Partnership, a critical component of Blackboard’s development and design methodology, to work with clients who advised us on the overall set of questions we sought to answer with our analytics solution. Then, in late 2011, we partnered with three institutions which deployed our software, live, on campus, in our pre-release field trial, to utilize our Analytics for Learn solution to examine real questions on their campuses regarding student performance, course design and Blackboard Learn usage. For these partnership efforts, we are considerably thankful to Montgomery County Community College, University of Maryland Baltimore County, and Grand Rapids Community College. In the coming weeks, we look forward to exploring further with our client community how Blackboard Analytics for Learn can improve student success, optimize online instruction, and contribute to the overall management of Blackboard Learn. We’ve begun actively implementing now with our next set of institutions. We look forward to exploring these initial successes and findings at the upcoming BbWorld in New Orleans in July. We’ll look forward to seeing you and continuing the conversation with you there.