Higher Ed

We’re excited to announce that we’ll be holding an ANGEL Community Webinar on October 18th at 2:00 pm ET to share a client-influenced roadmap for the ANGEL LMS 8.0.

When we announced the indefinite extension of ANGEL’s end of life earlier this year, we also said we would invest in select enhancements to ANGEL 8.0. We held an ANGEL Suggestion Squad during the summer to solicit the community’s input to help us determine where to make those investments. The ANGEL Community Webinar is your opportunity to hear that input and learn where we’ll be investing in ANGEL 8.0 over the coming year.

Imperial Valley College, a member of the California Community College system, has chosen Blackboard Learn as its new learning management system (LMS) for Fall 2012.

The decision comes after a thorough evaluation of alternative enterprise learning systems, and was driven after a comprehensive round of strategic planning at the College.

“We are really striving to be an exemplar among the California Community Colleges,” commented Todd Finnell, Vice President for Informational Technology. “When we sat down to implement our strategic vision for our institution, it became apparent that a review of our current e-Learning systems was necessary.”

As Senior Director of Product Management for Learn Course Delivery, Jim Chalex conducts research & guides the development of new capabilities to help instructors, learners, and staff get the most out of their online learning environment.  He specializes in assessment, data visualization, and analytics.

 

Data is in, but you don’t us need to tell you that. It’s evident by the number of infographics that pop up every day presenting data in a compelling way on any number of topics; these past few weeks, it’s been all about which Olympic athletes are getting the most social buzz and how the winningest Olympic nations fare when it comes to education.

But, regardless of the topic, it’s what we do with data that really matters. The same can be said for integrating EdTech into the classroom.

We know that students are already grabbing their education by the reins and looking for ways to personalize every part of their learning process – from where they get content to the tools they use in the classroom – they are in control.

So why shouldn’t we give them the opportunity to evaluate themselves?

On 22 June 2012, the Society for Pedagogy and Information (GPI) – a scientific society for multimedia, educational technology and media didactics – awarded the Comenius EduMedia Awards to outstanding products in the field of ICT-supported educational media. Blackboard Mobile Learn was awarded the Comenius EduMedia Seal of Approval and the Comenius EduMedia Medal in the category ‘Educational Management Systems (LMS)’.

The Blackboard Mobile™ Learn application gives students and faculty access to their courses, content, and organizations on a variety of mobile devices including Android™, BlackBerry® and iPhone OS. Students and instructors can access documents in multiple formats, read announcements, create discussion threads, upload media, create content items within the course map, comment on blogs and more—all on the mobile devices they love. This German trailer demonstrates what Blackboard Mobile Learn looks like on the iPad.

The German eLearning Journal put the Blackboard Learn platform to the test for their May edition. The magazine regularly tests various eLearning products in a number of categories, ranging from online solutions and video training to language training, online collaboration and learning management systems. Blackboard Learn 9.1 SP8 was thoroughly reviewed by a team of experts on 26 categories.  The experts awarded the platform great scores and the end verdict “Very Good”. In the report, the eLearning Journal states that: “One must attest that Blackboard Learn quite simply has, in all respects, what a modern LMS must have. The technical features such as scalability and adaptability achieved the same outstanding ratings as the administration did.” On flexibility and openness, the reviewers mention that “Blackboard doesn’t rely solely on its own standards; rather, it is so flexible, that, like a Lego brick, it can be integrated into a number of other systems and existing solutions.” Interested to learn more about this review? Click here to download the English version of the report and click here to download the German version of the report.