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My name is Chris Borales, I’m the on the Blackboard Learn product marketing team and I wanted to talk a little bit about some great strides that Blackboard has made in the area of accessibility.

Blackboard strives to deliver a quality experience for all of its users, regardless of ability. In fact, in Service Pack 11, we continued to build on the considerable progress we’ve made in the area of accessibility by becoming the first LMS in the world to achieve third-party verification of conformance with the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 2.0 Priority AA standards issued by Deque Systems.

What does that mean exactly for users with disabilities? In service pack 11 Blackboard has:

• Increased focus on color contrast throughout the application ensuring that contrast ratios meet or exceed the 4:5:1 contrast ratio requirements of WCAG 2.0 Priority AA.
• Updated keyboard navigation within contextual menus and list action menus to ensure they follow commonly understood keyboard patterns.
• Controlled focus when completing tasks within the screen reader view of the Grade Center, ensuring the user is returned to the proper cell in the main Grade Center table.
• Made improvements to the screen reader interaction within the ‘fill in multiple blanks’ question when building and taking a test.

These enhancements greatly improve the experience navigating within Blackboard Learn and completing key teaching and learning tasks for users with disabilities. See more about what else we are doing to make Blackboard Learn more accessible here.

“Making accessible software is about so much more than meeting the standards. We continue to drive toward the usable and enjoyable experience for everyone,” notes Vice President of User Experience Stephanie Weeks.

With Blackboard Learn 9.1 we continue to provide all users a quality experience, and you can expect some great things to come as we move forward in 2013.

Blackboard Collaborate Customers and Partners,

I write today to acknowledge that over the past several weeks your Blackboard Collaborate web conferencing experience may have been below the high standard you expect from us.  I speak for the entire Collaborate organization when I say that we are deeply sorry for this, and we are totally committed to returning our service to the expected levels.  We thank you for your patience as we work to return this important service to the high level of performance you’ve come to enjoy.

Let me start with an executive summary of what’s occurring.  Collaborate has been subjected to a series of distributed denial-of-service attempts, or DDoS.  During these events a large number of connections flood our systems, draining resources and causing unpredictable behavior for end users.  Given the synchronous nature of our solutions, the impact to our service is much more noticeable and impactful.

It’s important to note that at no time have our systems been compromised nor has the Collaborate application failed.  Rather, network congestion caused by the DDoS attempts has prevented our community from enjoying typical levels of performance.

We have now researched and tested a path to resolution.  We have already taken steps to shorten the duration of the disruptions and are implementing a plan to prevent them altogether. It requires that we filter all traffic, and sort out the bad DDoS requests from the good client traffic.  As we implement these changes, there may be some temporary and relatively minor performance degradation, but we expect it to be a small inconvenience that allows us to confidently restore consistent and reliable service by early March.

We’ve emailed details regarding upcoming changes to Collaborate administrators earlier today.  Click here for details.

I want to extend our sincere apologies to not only our customers, but also to the impacted teachers and the students for the resultant service disruptions that these DDoS attempts have caused.  Every student deserves the best educational experience each and every day, and we take our responsibility to facilitate that experience seriously.

If you have questions or want to provide feedback directly related to this topic, please contact us at collaborateconfidently@blackboard.com.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Sincerely,

Maurice Heiblum

President, Blackboard Collaborate

 

Our mission at Blackboard, “everyone educated,” is admittedly ambitious, but this past week, we teamed up with the U.S. Embassies in the Philippines and Thailand to take a step toward this goal in those countries. Blackboard hosted two round-table discussions with world leaders in higher education on how we can work together to provide students a world-class education as a means to improve those nations’ economies.

These events featured engaging conversations with key education leaders from the Philippines, Thailand and abroad on regional educational technology imperatives, and how technology can be used to drive economic growth and move these countries to more knowledge-based economies. Speakers shared how Blackboard technology was used to train close to 7 million citizens to build a better labor market and improve local economies in Latin America.

We at Blackboard are proud to share our expertise in using technology to enhance learning, and will continue to partner with world leaders to lead the discussion around the future of education in the U.S. and abroad.

 

Learning is not a spectator sport. Learning requires discussion, engagement and debate, all while actively looking back on experiences and interacting with others.

Katherine Dowdell, District Chair for Social and Behavioral Sciences at Des Moines Area Community College, knows how difficult it can be to encourage students to engage in their education. Katherine began her tenure teaching online courses after volunteering for the role never having previously done it. Seven years later, she’s now coaching colleagues on how to be successful online.

Katherine’s tip on getting student’s engaged? Set up an engagement triple play. Online classrooms can facilitate student engagement in new and different ways than in-person training. With online learning: 1. Students engage with instructors. 2. Students engage with content. 3. Students engage with one another.

58% of faculty members say that the growth of online education makes them more fearful than excited. Originally, Katherine wasn’t sure that her students were “getting it.” Her fears subsided, though, and she’s helped us put together an Instructor’s Field Guide titled, 5 Ways to Get Started with the Online Classroom.

Every once in a while, we have to tackle something outside of our comfort zone. Whether that something is running a marathon or teaching an online course after years of in-person instruction, everyone goes through moments of discomfort.

Katherine Dowdell, an instructor with over 20-years of in-person classroom experience, was thrown into an uncomfortable situation. Asked to teach an online-course at Des Moines Area Community College, Katherine was at first unsure if her students were “getting it,” or how she was coming across. After plenty of trial and error, and now with seven years of online teaching under her belt, Katherine is an expert. She even coaches colleagues on how to succeed in an online classroom!  (Especially important since 58% of faculty said that the growth of online education made them more fearful than excited!)