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It’s conference season, folks! And a lot of you are tasked by your colleagues to make the most of your time spent on the Exhibit Hall floor by engaging in conversations that can impact your jobs, learn what other educators are doing, and create relationships with vendors. If you want to up the ante this year and connect with even more people at conferences like BbWorld, we have some tips for you!

1.)   Download the BbWorld mobile app to stay up-to-date on breaking news, must see sessions, conference photos, and more. This year’s app connects you to your favorite social media channels and even has a scavenger hunt!

Download Android App

Download iPhone App

Get to know the Blackboard Learn Experts in preparation for New Orleans.

BbWorld is so jam-packed full of great sessions, discussions, and fun times that it helps to plan ahead a little bit.  The Learn team and I thought it would be fun to give you a roster of ‘who’s who’ on the team so that you can locate the right people for your needs at BbWorld. Many of these product experts will be doing cool product demos and min-sessions of favorite workflows in Blackboard Learn (even some future functionality). They will be available at the Blackboard Learn booth for discussions about software or to discuss the Amazon, VW Vans, and how King Edward II lost his wife! Let’s not delay – meet the experts who can give you answers to the questions you have about Blackboard Learn.  (In order to not overwhelm you, there will be additional experts introduced in follow up posts – stay tuned)

At this year’s BbWorld 2012 event, higher education leaders and officials will get together to trade user experiences and innovative program successes using Blackboard technology with peers from around the world. With each conference, attendees hear presentations and participate in sessions discussing common challenges to identify unique solutions to implement on their campus. For the last few years, it has been apparent that most higher education officials continue to look for ways to better engage the mobile student population. This year is no different, as many mobility-minded sessions are sprinkled throughout the agenda. Depending on the department, university officials and instructors aren’t just looking to know how to utilize available mobile tools and technologies, but many are looking for proven programs using mobile devices to better address the needs of their campus community.

As this year’s Catalyst Award winner for innovation in communication strategies, Dionne Curbeam is familiar with developing and implementing mobile strategies to engage the student population at Coppin State University. Serving an academically promising but financially challenge student population, Coppin State pays special attention to students to help ensure their educational success and that they graduate on time. Having tried various methods of outreach, include email, Coppin State officials decided to utilize text messaging as a way to communicate quickly and effectively with students. Sending text messages out notifying of campus updates or reminding of upcoming events or activities proved extremely successful. The text messages were so popular that Coppin State is looking to institute a similar program for instructors and professors to send out course-specific messages by implementing the Connect for Learn service. Students and instructors alike delivered positive feedback to the more instant and personalized means of communication by the school. Dionne Curbeam and Ahmed El-Haggan will be discussing their mobile communication plan during BbWorld 2012. The session, “ Analyze, Enable and Interact: Using Blackboard Technology to Reach and Retain At-Risk Students” will be held on July 11 at 10:55 a.m. in Room 391. To learn more about this year’s BbWorld Sessions, visit the website. To register, click here.

This year’s BbWorld 2012 event is less than a month away. The annual user and professional development conference provides Blackboard administrators a chance to share success stories and trade best practices with peers from across the world. Traditionally, educators and officials from colleges and universities have a prominent presence at the 3-day event. With last year’s merger with Edline, Blackboard has more K-12 users than ever, and that sentiment will definitely be represented this year with more K-12 presentations and sessions than in previous years. At Blackboard Connect, our K-12 clients have regularly participated in the BbWorld, demonstrating the powerful impact targeted messages and proactive communication can have within their school districts. This year is no different, as we have lined up several K-12 leaders to share their experiences using Blackboard Connect. Where BbWorld 2011 served as an effective stage for the launch of Blackboard Connect 5, this year attendees will benefit from hearing success stories and programs dedicated to demonstrating Connect 5’s expanded feature set and functionality.

Guest Blog Post by Dan Lim, Ph.D., Vice President for Educational Technology and Distance Learning, Florida Hospital College of Health Sciences (linkedin.com/in/danlim01). Dan will be presenting “De-angelizing Synchronous Distance Teaching: Collaborate To Enhance Online Education Quality” at Blackboard Collaborate Connections Summit 2012 on Thursday, July 12, 2012 from 2:50-3:45PM.

Once upon a time, it was popular to angelize.  Now it’s time to de-angelize.  At Florida Hospital College of Health Sciences (FHCHS), our plan to de-angelize is still on track though the ANGEL learning system has recently been put on indefinite life support.  Although ANGEL has served us well, its unscalable chat tool has been the Achilles’ heel since the beginning when we used it in the synchronous distance delivery of our three distance degree programs.

The transition to Blackboard Collaborate this year is a timely and critical change.  If your institution is experiencing various challenges in the quality of distance delivery, there are ten reasons why you need to attend our session, seven of which are on how Collaborate is a great solution to distance education challenges and three reasons why the transition has been smooth and quite painless.