Developers+

A blog for faculty, developers and system administrators focusing on the latest Blackboard Learn technical and commercial partner news. We’ll share documentation and information on web services and APIs along with Blackboard Partner updates and technologies.

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by Rebecca Hellman

Kick Start Your Students’ Careers at BbWorld 2012

It’s almost that time of the year again – Blackboard World is right around the corner. This July in New Orleans, educators from across the country will not only soak in the latest technology advancements in education, but for the first time, will also have the opportunity to help kick start their students’ careers.
More and more employers say real-world experience is the key to getting a job in today’s increasingly competitive global economy. Internships.com and Blackboard have partnered to help students differentiate themselves from the pack and land jobs and internships through the free Internships.com Building Block.
Troy University Director of Educational Technology, Ronnie Creel, will be joined by Internships.com Chief Marketing Officer, Stuart Lander, to share their experiences on the launch of the free Internships.com Building Block within Blackboard Learn.  Mr. Creel will present a case study of institutional adoption at Troy University – sharing analytics information including user activity data, time on site, building block usage, and more. Mr. Lander will discuss the importance of internships to students in today’s economic climate, and present the product features of the Building Block.
In this challenging economic environment, where students can use every bit of help in landing a job or internship, this is a session that you cannot afford to miss.
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by Katie Drossos

Helping Students Jumpstart Their Careers

When the Federal Government created new educational regulations stating universities must better prepare students for gainful employment, Troy University saw it as a chance to fine-tune its own efforts. With unemployment at record high levels, Troy decided to make internship placement more readily available to all of its students in an effort to help them gain employment after graduation.

Troy already had career centers at each of its four campuses, but an increasing number of students were taking classes online from remote locations without access to the on-campus centers. With roughly half of the student body online, Troy University needed a new solution to help the students find internships prior to graduation. “There was definitely a need for internship placement for the online students,” said Ronnie Creel, director of Education Technology at Troy.

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by Katie Drossos

Where Online Learning is an Interactive Conversation

Indiana University/Purdue University (IPFW) offers more than 200 academic programs from its campus in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Traditional face-to-face classes make up a majority of the courses, but online classes are growing fast due to demand from more than 12,000 students. In an effort to stimulate learning in online classes, the university’s Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT) began providing streaming media technology to faculty. Although there was strong demand from the staff, the technology proved hard to use and only supported one file format. “Students were having problems accessing the media from different devices and the professors were asking for more in-depth capabilities,” said Samantha Birk, associate director for Instructional Technologies at CELT. With faculty demand growing quickly, the university began an official search for a new, user-friendly solution that would support a wide variety of file formats, integrate well with the Blackboard Learn™ platform, and be easy to implement. After carefully reviewing several options, the university selected Kaltura – a market-leading open source online video platform that allows faculty to easily create, edit and upload videos with a click of a button. Once the videos are uploaded to the cloud-based platform, students can view the videos from any device in any location. “Kaltura’s flexible and easy-to-use platform integrates well with Blackboard, allowing faculty to embed videos with specific lesson plans,” said Birk. “This solution provides a more rounded learning experience for our students.” Dr. Jacob Millspaw is a fan of the solution, “The technology is a great way to get across complex concepts that would otherwise be impossible with text…The videos keep the online class more like a conversation, which helps with experimentation and learning.” Check out the full case study to learn about how Dr. Millspaw takes advantage of the Kaltura solution in the classroom how Kaltura helped IPFW with its expanding media needs.
Kaltura
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