Developers+

Digital Content Resources to Help You Get Ready for the Fall Semester

With the publisher building blocks which you’ve no doubt heard a lot about this past summer, faculty have the opportunity to integrate digital content from Higher Ed’s leading publishers into their courses. Faculty can pick and choose rich digital content from a wide variety of publisher sources, including Cengage Learning, McGraw-Hill, Pearson and Wiley, all seamlessly integrated into the Blackboard Learn platform.

If you’ve already installed these building blocks, you may be wondering how you help your faculty get started. We’ve consolidated a number of publisher resources on linking accounts, pairing courses, adding content and more – all within Blackboard Learn.

Win a $100 AMEX Gift Card by becoming one of the first Blackboard Sys Admin Superstars!

Did you know? 75% of students use course content from at least one of these four leading publishers: Cengage, Wiley, Pearson and McGraw-Hill. And the way students are consuming this course content is dramatically changing. In just the last 4 years, we’ve seen a six-fold increase in digital content sales in education globally and most experts suspect that we are still at the shallow end of the growth curve. Faculty and students increasingly want their course content, assignments and grades built right in to their Blackboard course in order to be more efficient, save time and focus on what is important to them – teaching and learning.

And YOU have the ability to make this digital content readily available to those who need it most this fall! With the publisher building blocks, faculty will have an opportunity to integrate digital content from Higher Ed’s leading publishers in to their fall courses. When you download these building blocks, we know you will be dubbed as a Sys Admin Superstar on campus and Blackboard would like to make sure you are recognized as a superstar and MORE!

To become a Blackboard Sys Admin Superstar and win $100, all you need to do is download and install at least 3 of this fall’s hottest Blackboard building blocks from our partner publishers: Cengage, Wiley, Pearson and/or McGraw-Hill. Then, fill out your name and email address here. The first 25 superstars will be awarded a $100 AMEX gift card because here at Blackboard – we know everyone in education is busy this time of year.   And that’s not all! We will also celebrate your superstardom on the Twitter-sphere so that you are recognized by all of your peers! So make sure to follow our Blackboard blog, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. Official contest rules can be found here.

Want more details on how to become a Blackboard Sys Admin Superstar? Follow these steps:

Today’s digital natives – those who have had access to computers, cell phones, email, and other forms of technology since birth – expect their professors to integrate media into the curriculum to augment learning in the classroom.

Kaltura, a market-leading open source online video platform and a Blackboard Premier Partner, helps universities deliver on this expectation by allowing faculty to easily create, edit and upload videos with a click of a button. Once the videos are uploaded to the platform, students can view the videos from any device in any location.

In 2010, Professor Sharon Feaster began offering Connect Anatomy & Physiology to her students as an extra study tool. Professor Feaster was hesitant to require McGraw-Hill Connect and have her students go to two course websites – Blackboard Learn and Connect – so she made it optional for students.

As soon as the Blackboard integration became available, she immediately jumped on board and started requiring her students to use McGraw-Hill Connect.  As a result, she experienced significant improvements in course and exam pass rates, demonstrating the effectiveness of Connect and LearnSmart on student learning.  In addition, she saw a 29% reduction in course withdrawals, which she assumes is a result of fewer students feeling compelled to withdraw because they were succeeding in the course.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read this case study to find out why Professor Feaster credits Connect with having made a real difference for her students.

There’s no doubt that the growth of digital learning content is accelerating.  Multiple resources indicate that a higher ed world of blended and online learning is rapidly approaching, some resources even cite the “flip to digital” occurring in the next 5 years.  Textbooks aren’t going away any time soon but their use in the classroom is declining steadily.  And, expectations are that instructors will graduate from eTexts to the more sophisticated integrated learning systems being developed by publishers.

What does this mean for you?

Blackboard can be a channel for all this content and tools, helping faculty make sense of the numerous digital content options available to them.  Blackboard offers a broad choice of content to choose from right within the Blackboard Learn course.  I would like to take a moment to look at one of our newest providers of digital content: Cengage Learning.