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As Hurricane Sandy continues to threaten communities along the East Coast with an expected landfall tonight near southern New Jersey, public sector institutions are rushing to prepare their communities. Sandy is a dangerous storm of potentially-historic proportions with expected storm surges, river flooding, and high winds impacting the most densely-populated coastal region in the country.

A key component of a crisis response strategy is communication – and that’s why it’s no surprise that, yesterday alone, Blackboard Connect clients sent over 6 million Sandy-related messages.

Here are some examples of institutions that have sent timely alerts:

• K-12 school districts from North Carolina to Massachusetts have used Blackboard Connect to cancel school today and tomorrow. Trick-or-treat or other Halloween activities are also being cancelled or postponed.
• Monmouth University in New Jersey cancelled classes today and tomorrow, and promised students that updates would be provided via Blackboard Connect.
• North Shore Alerts, a regional consortium serving multiple municipalities on Long Island, have issued a number of alerts over the weekend to prepare residents for Sandy, and urged residents to register their contact information with Blackboard Connect.
• Queen Anne’s County, Md., also recommended that residents register for Connect messages, and reminded them of the system’s utility in a recent closure of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

For K-12 school districts, colleges and universities, local municipalities and counties, and private companies, Blackboard Connect helps organizations prepare for nature’s worst.  With a decade of experience delivering critical messages, including during Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Ike, we’ve developed a strong set of best practices for communicating in hurricanes.

Last week as the storm menaced, we shared those best practices with clients in the impacted area. But you don’t have to be a Connect customer to benefit from this knowledge.  In fact, you can download the Blackboard Connect Hurricane Playbook today and put its advice into practice with in advance of Sandy’s landfall.

Another pro tip for Blackboard Connect users: if you’ve evacuated to a safe location, and need to send messages fast, our smartphone apps for message senders make it easy to get an alert out fast. Download the Android app or the iOS app today.

 

Update: Bb Connect sent another 6 million messages on Monday, Oct 29 – bringing the Sandy-related total to 12 million so far.

 

The following is a guest blog post with Terry Patterson. Terry is the Blackboard Learn system administrator at the University of Missouri. As a seasoned Blackboard Learn veteran of nine years, he started a blog called Blackboardguru.com where he provides valuable insight to other Blackboard Learn system administrators.

Whether you’re just getting started as a Blackboard System Administrator or are a veteran like myself, here are three pieces of information to take with you on your LMS journey:

1. Learn by doing. When I started my work as a Blackboard admin, I never attended official training for the first year or so.  While I highly recommend getting training, it’s the time and effort that you spend learning about Blackboard that will make you a lifesaver to a faculty member or student.  It’s been almost 10 years since I first logged into Blackboard and everyday I’m still learning something new about it.

When Scott Davis, Technology Services Director of Applications Services, and his team set out to create a mobile campus application (“app”) for Virginia Commonwealth University (“VCU”), they didn’t just envision creating another app but rather, an extension of the school. To ensure this, Davis and his team partnered with Blackboard to develop a platform that combined VCU’s vision to bring technology to the campus and Blackboard’s expertise in building mobile applications that transform learning.

In the competitive environment to attract talented students in higher education, universities are looking to have an edge. They struggle to meet the needs and expectations of millennial and non-traditional students. Students are using their mobile devices for email, text messaging, and social networking.

Furthermore, today’s student is entering college already familiar with a course management system from their K12 environment. Through VCU Mobile, VCU is able to keep students engaged so they are more invested in the classroom, more likely to capitalize on resources provided by the institution, and ultimately perform better academically.

“Mobile brings down the classroom barrier and makes for a more engaging experience” says Davis.

The following is a guest post from Mark Radcliffe, Director of Professional Development at the not-for-profit company blendedschools.net. Mark has worked in various K-20 education positions for the last 10 years including working directly with students and teachers on technology integration projects. At blendedschools.net Mark manages the teacher development program including onsite and online professional development for over 10,000 teachers. Mark is currently located in Norfolk, Virginia, USA but is originally from Manchester UK. He enjoys the city and loves music and the visual arts.

I recently had the opportunity to participate in beta testing the latest release of  Blackboard Learn . This came soon after I attended the Blackboard Calendar focus group in July as well as countless road map presentations.

The phrase that sums up my beta experience with the learning management system (LMS) is “improving can be greater than adding”. I’ve been using Blackboard for almost 10 years and I’ve seen a lot of changes in that time. I can hold up my hand and say that I was one of the Blackboard Learn version 9.1 whiners. I longed for the simplicity of Blackboard Learn version 8. However as Blackboard has changed, I too have changed [my mind].

Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with Dana Aldis, LivingSocial’s, Director of Sales Training and Development, to discuss how her company uses Blackboard’s Salesforce integration throughout the sales training process. If you’re not familiar with LivingSocial, it is the local marketplace to buy and share the best things in your city (and their headquarters is just across the street from Blackboard’s here in D.C.!).  Since LivingSocial relies heavily on developing relationships with small businesses to create unique offers for its members, having an informed, agile sales force is critical to the company’s success.

 

Q: Why did you decide to incorporate your training programs within Salesforce?

Aldis: Salesforce is one of the main ways we communicate with our sales team, so having this integration is key. Through Blackboard’s integration with Salesforce, for example, our users can access training directly from Salesforce so training courses are easy to access and are more directly aligned with company goals. The powerful reporting tools have also been a huge asset allowing us to see what training is most useful to individual sales reps while analyzing the relationship between a rep’s training and performance metrics.