Developers+

Globally, education is grappling with the need to put learners at the center, to engage them in and beyond the classroom.  All while doing more with less, increasing accountability and finding new funding streams.  Technology has an ever-growing role to play at the heart of education – if you can trust it, manage it, and make it your own.  The challenges are real, but so are the solutions.

Since the merger of Blackboard and WebCT, I've watched with pride the synergy created by two education companies coming together to do something bigger and better, to improve learning outcomes and enable education providers to make a true difference in their work, in the lives of their students.  Today, I'm excited to see the endeavors of the Blackboard community's labors come to fruition with the launch of Blackboard Learn, Release 9.

Driven by the demands of educators and technology professionals across and beyond the Blackboard community, Blackboard Learn, Release 9 re-imagines the use of technology to drive student achievement.  Engagement and openness are the design principles of Blackboard Learn, Release 9.

Learners need to be engaged – no matter who they are or how they learn.  The all-new Web 2.0 experience in Release 9 makes it easy to meaningfully combine information from different sources.  The addition of blogs and journals brings reflective learning to the forefront; and by integrating with the Facebook platform, we can take the learning process to students where they are – meeting their expectations.

When Blackboard and WebCT started working with developers out of Cornell University and the University of British Columbia back in the late '90s, we wanted to bring new paradigms for openness in education using the Internet.  We succeeded with our early versions of our Learning Systems, but I continually am amazed by the potential – specifically, the untapped potential – for the support of technology to impact learning for the better.

The next generation of openness is now real, with the ability to connect to other learning systems, such as Moodle and Sakai, making it easy for institutions to bring all their learning into one place.  And openness is also all about feedback: the more data students get about their performance, the better they perform.  The more feedback educators get about their performance, the better they perform.  It's a simple equation.  Blackboard Learn, Release 9 makes personal expression, group collaboration, and feedback easy, real and timely:

• The Grade Center brings teacher and student into closer dialogue
• The Notifications Dashboard gets students and educators the feedback they need, when they need it
• SafeAssign holds a mirror up to a student's citation skills, improving the art of referencing in the information age
• Students can now deepen their collaboration with the improved group tools, which bring a host of learning activities into one place

And whether you seek to collaborate in Russian, Swedish, Finnish, Brazilian-Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese or a host of other languages, or need assistance with content re-ordering through a screen-reader, Blackboard Learn, Release 9 opens those doors, as well.

While the challenges are real, so are the solutions!  Even better news?  This is just the beginning: I have an education-focused team that already has the next set of platform innovations in the pipeline for 2009, delivering yet more freedom of choice for students and education providers alike.  I can't wait to jump that curve.

Happy learning!

Over the weekend we launched the new Blackboard.com.  Web site updates aren't typically news, but in this case I want to send out a heads up because of the change in our company that the completely new site reflects.  I summarized that change in a letter on the site.  Check it out.  Short story, I hope you get a sense for our evolving mission and solutions, and how they can help you.  As well as for the more straightforward communicator we’re trying to become as an organization.

Take a look.  And if you have a second, let us know what you think.  Either through the site or tell me directly at CEO@blackboard.com.

Blackboard has one of the most diverse user bases of any application in use at institutions of learning worldwide.  From teachers and college students to elementary school principals and parents, to system administrators and academic leaders, to distance learners who log in from all over the world, the breadth of the millions of users that log into Blackboard software each day is astounding.

 

Each of these groups can be broken out further into user constituencies that want to use Blackboard software in the exact way they see fit.  At the many conferences, meetings, webinars and workshops we attend, Blackboarders are constantly listening to your challenges, and your feedback has not fallen on deaf ears.

The Product Management team and I talk to all of these different types of users, and one interesting perspective is that the diversity of most of the needs all comes back to the Blackboard system administrators.  No matter what kind of school, the Blackboard administrators are called upon to deliver technology solutions that match up with all of these needs to their varied users.

 

Recommending an enhancement or improvement to a Blackboard product or service has just become easier.  One now only needs to drop a simple entry virtually into the Blackboard Suggestion Box, which was highlighted in an article in the December issue of the Blackboard K-12 Bulletin:

"The Suggestion Box is a single place for all client product suggestions, whether the idea originated as an individual client request, as a part of a users group discussion, during a meeting with your client manager or through any other channel. Upon receipt, a Blackboard product manager will review your suggestion to better understand the challenges you or your organization are facing and you’ll be notified via e-mail that your suggestion has been received."

By Susan M. Zvacek, Ph.D., Director, Instructional Development and Support, University of Kansas

I’m writing this blog post from my “visiting professor lodging” in Prague and have been pondering the differences between e-learning here (that is, Central Europe) and in the United States.  It occurs to me that the differences I’ve encountered reflect minor characteristics, but there are some interesting parallels between categorizing e-learning geographically and designating e-learning as separate and distinct from more traditional forms of instruction. 

I’ve long argued that e-learning (and before e-learning, any form of distance education) should be evaluated rigorously, using criteria based on what we know about human learning and instructional design.  This call for serious scrutiny of online courses is not at all unusual; we hear it from educational administrators, accrediting bodies, and department chairs, for example.  What we don’t typically hear, however, is the second part of my argument: that all courses – face-to-face, blended, online, and everything in between – should be evaluated rigorously with less regard for the instructional environment than for factors that are more likely to influence learning and achievement.