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Putting students first is worthy of praise. But don’t take our word for it.

After being named Best Consumer Value during the Paybefore Awards at the Prepaid Expo in Orlando, Florida, an independent panel of industry experts and visitors to Paybefore.com designated BlackboardPay^™ Best-in-Category, edging out offerings from American Express, Walmart and Blackhawk Networks for this honor. BlackboardPay is the only program designed specifically for higher education recognized with a Best-in-Category distinction.

BlackboardPay is an FDIC-insured prepaid card program that gives students immediate access to their financial aid and student payroll funds without having to wait for a paper check or an ACH disbursement, providing the institution with a phenomenal opportunity to provide their students with a program that’s practically unheard of in the student market.

With the cost of education becoming a progressively hotter topic and the long-term impact of debt becoming clearer to students, we know how important it is that students have free and clear access to their financial aid funds. Not just for the sake of compliance with federal regulations, but because every penny of these disbursements possible should go towards tuition, room, board (and pizza!), not to a bank. That’s why we designed BlackboardPay to protect students from things like overdraft charges and PIN debit fees, and made it simple to withdraw funds, surcharge-free, at 50,000 Allpoint® ATMs around the world, more than 3,600 Walmarts and thousands of in-lobby banking partners in the U.S.

 

“Golf is the closest game to the game we call life. You get bad breaks from good shots; you get good breaks from bad shots – but you have to play the ball where it lies,” said the American amateur golfer, Bobby Jones. The game is catching on with more and more young athletes, playing for fun, on school teams, and in youth golf tournaments. Aside from the life-lessons golf teaches — among them problem-solving, honor and honesty, and patience — golf is also a great illustration of STEM concepts, from friction and spin on tee-off, to the math of calculating a handicap.

NBC Learn’s newest Special Collection is “Science of Golf,” a new video series produced in partnership with the United States Golf Association (USGA) and Chevron. Among the video titles:

“Volume, Displacement & Buoyancy”
“Evolution of the Golf Ball”
“Calculating a Golf Handicap Index”
“Evolution of the Golf Club”

View these videos at nbclearn.com/golf

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Barbara Klett at Central Oregon Community College.  I simply started with, “Can you tell me about your relationship with Blackboard?”  Her response pleased me to the point that I asked if I could share her sentiments with the Blackboard community through our blog.  I’m thrilled to let you in on our discussion.  And, thanks, Barbara, for your willingness to share with others your thoughts on what you are seeing from Blackboard.

 

Here are some excerpts from my conversation with Barbara…

Working with 1000 instructors, students and administrators to develop our last major release in November seemed hard to top, but I was humbled and proud to hear that more than 2000 have guided us in the development process since then as we hit another milestone with today’s release of a simply better Blackboard Learn.

Through our wide array of client programs, we empowered you to take ideas and work hand-in-hand with us through the development process, from the initial creation of the use case, to design and the field trials. And because we’ve invested heavily in these programs, I hope that when you see product videos, screenshots and ultimately get your hands on these features, you’ll say, “That’s exactly how I expected it to work.” Our goal is to let you focus on core teaching and learning tasks and not the technology support around those activities.

One of the first things that stands out to someone new to Blackboard Learn is the overall grading workflow. Starting with the Needs Grading View, you have an instant, streamlined view into what requires your attention.

This new release extends our inline (i.e. onscreen in the browser) grading capabilities from blogs, discussions, wikis and journals to assignments. Imagine the traditional workflow for scoring these. You would need to download the file, save it to your desktop, make edits, save again and then re-upload. Now you can make all those annotations (text edits, highlights, comments, strikethroughs) right on the screen. And it doesn’t stop there! Once you grade one student’s work, in just one click you can easily navigate to the next assignment – without having to go back to the GradeCenter to enter grades.

Assignments are one way to measure student learning, and of course, tests are another. You outlined certain scenarios that required us to change design, deployment and feedback options for tests, and today’s release delivers on those. You now have the ability to set different test availability rules for different users, or groups of users – for example, for students with disabilities who might need more time to complete a test. And on the feedback side, there is more granular control for what a student sees. So after submitting the online exam, a test-taker can immediately see the final grade but not the answers to prevent cheating.

I’m a numbers guy, so I would be remiss if I didn’t use this opening to mention my favorite feature that came out Blackboard Learn last fall – Test Item Analysis. I’m not going to get into the algorithms and backend calculations that were created by people far smarter than me, but in a nutshell, this feature measures the effectiveness of your assessments. Perhaps a question was worded poorly, or a student can justify an alternate answer, or maybe it was just a simple mistake and the wrong answer was put into the system. This feature helps you identify – and then automatically correct  – those issues.

Fear not, you don’t need to manually go in and regrade each affected test. Within this workflow itself, you can edit the offending test question and then hit “update and regrade.” Whether it’s five tests or 500, you just fixed it with one push of a button!

Now that you’ve scored assignments and tests, you need to analyze student performance in your courses. One option is to look at grades and the information in the Course Activity Reports, which track which students access your online materials and for how long.

Suppose we did that for you? In, let’s say a dashboard that measures student engagement and performance? That’s exactly what we built, and we call it the Retention Center. This automatically identifies students could be at-risk, and allows you to take action before it’s too late. Whether that’s scheduling office hours, providing more personalized instruction or assigning additional content, that’s up to you. Now you have the tool to help you do just that.

If conducting some virtual sessions or scheduling office hours is part of the plan for your at-risk students, you can do that on our revamped, modern calendar. It addresses one of, if not the most requested enhancement to Blackboard Learn. Those of you who are J’s on the Myers-Briggs indicator like me will love the ability to color code courses and activities on the calendar. And if you need to modify the due date, you can simply drag and drop to the new spot on the calendar –the date associated with the assignment in Blackboard will automatically update!

That’s just a quick peek into what we’ve done in this release for you. I could go on about the rebuilt Discussions and ways that we’ve incorporated assistive technology into the system, but I’ll let you see those in action on our YouTube Channel

And our support for you, the educators, doesn’t stop upon the release of the features. We’ve made a significant investment in empowering faculty members, as is evidenced by a new Faculty Resources page. There, you can find the most up-to-date information including feature videos, training programs, our MOOC catalogue, and on-demand tutorials.

We recognize that the time that we make new functionality available to you doesn’t always sync up with when your institution plans to adopt those features. In order to leverage these innovations and enhancements, I encourage you to test drive the latest version of Blackboard Learn yourself for free with a Guided Trial. Whether you want to see how we’ve addressed your concerns or if you just want to get a head start on rolling out these new tools to your students, the Guided Trial can be tremendous asset for you.

Do you have two minutes and want to see these in action before jumping in? Take a look at the video below, and you’ll see why Blackboard Learn is simply better for you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxdJ3ar12bE&feature=share&list=PLontYaReEU1uivbr7MFnCcdSgLgELAkRP

Here Comes Everybody, the bestseller by Clay Shirky, made nothing less than the Guardian list of the 100 greatest nonfiction books of all time. It explores how the Internet has enabled the public to do something hardly possible before: organize ourselves around an idea without the help (or constraints) of an existing institution. Power to the people, 21st century style.

It’s pioneering insight like this that has earned Shirky the status of Internet idol and icon…and that makes us thrilled to announce that he is the opening keynote speaker for BbWorld 2013.

Since 1996, Shirky has written about the Internet’s positive impact on society for publications including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and Wired. (Prior to that, he even edited what is believed to be the first book on HTML.) The original Professor of New Media at Hunter College, he currently holds two positions at New York University: Associate Arts Professor in the Interactive Telecommunications Program and Distinguished Writer in Residence in the journalism department.

Shirky is a widely quoted expert on topics including the power of peer-to-peer networking, open source development, and crowdsourcing, known for his phrase “the Internet runs on love.” Based on his observation that “Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution,” he’s even had a principle named after him.

His book Cognitive Surplus focuses on the observation that digital technology is transforming consumers into producers of content. Everyone who tweets, posts, or otherwise makes his/her voice heard online is a citizen journalist. They question they—we—ask now is not “Why publish this” but rather “Why not?”

“We have lived in this world where little things are done for love and big things for money,” Shirky said. “Now we have [cooperative group efforts like] Wikipedia. Suddenly big things can be done for love.”

So come one, come all—here comes everybody, we hope—to what is sure to be a thoughtful and memorable keynote. Register now for BbWorld 2013.