Higher Ed

This weekend at the American Council of Education conference,  Blackboard Student Services announced with Hobsons, one of the leading companies in recruitment, communication and student success solutions for colleges and universities, a partnership that will offer current and prospective client institutions complementary services from each company that will help enhance the process of delivering support to students in all aspects of the student lifecycle. Both Blackboard and Hobsons offer complementary services to our individual client bases and we often find our solutions working together in different parts of the same institutions.  Through this partnership, we will provide our current and future clients a more streamlined integration of our separate offerings. Colleges and universities will now have the option of working with TWO market leaders through integrated services, support and technology in various aspects of the campus experience such as:

• The development of marketing strategies,
• Proactive recruitment and outreach efforts,
• Continuous live, Web and mobile support of financial aid and enrollment information to improve enrollment conversions,
• Increasing student retention, and more.

“Student expectations have changed and there is high demand for 24/7 access to information and real-time responses,” said Craig Chanoff, general manager of Blackboard Student Services. “While student support organizations within institutions try to meet these expectations, more and more universities are relying on technology to gain efficiencies. We are excited to partner with Hobsons to give institutions the option of working with two market leaders to build and maintain relationships with their students.” To learn more, check out the press release announcing the exciting new partnership. In other ACE conference news, we also announced a renewed partnership and a $700,000 in-kind gift to support the ACE Fellows Program, which prepares senior leaders to serve colleges and universities nationwide. Through this give, we have made Blackboard Learn™, Blackboard Colalborate™, and Blackboard Mobile™ available to the ACE Fellows Program, enabling greater communication between ACE Fellows and program instructors, greater collaboration with higher education leaders around the world, and provide a central location for program logistics, assignments, resources and online discussions.

The next four months are going to fly by. How do I know?  Because the planning for the second annual Blackboard Collaborate™ Connections Summit is in full-swing, and as we continue to dot a myriad of i’s and cross countless t’s, our entire team cannot wait to see so many of you in New Orleans in mid-July. The reasons to attend are numerous.  We’ll unveil the latest enhancements to our Blackboard Collaborate™ platform.  Our fearless leader Maurice Heiblum will share the considerable progress our division has made now that we’ve had a full year under our belt as a combined company.  You’ll have full access to all of BbWorld 2012—yes, even its famous parties and keynotes.  You can roll-up your sleeves and get your hands dirty with the current version of Blackboard Collaborate.  And perhaps most importantly, you can attend nearly 50 sessions by Blackboard Collaborate customers from around the globe. And it’s always the customer-led sessions that are the showstoppers. This year’s Connections Summit agenda covers a variety of topics ranging from best practices and effective instructional design, to decreasing costs and adoption and implementation.  And perhaps most importantly, several tracks will specifically focus on upgrading from Elluminate or Wimba to Blackboard Collaborate. For many of our customers, 2012 is the year in which they’ll upgrade from one of our legacy products to our shiny new toy, and we want them to have the smoothest transition possible.  Therefore, in New Orleans, customers can attend an upgrade panel presentation featuring customers at Northern Illinois University, the University of Arkansas in Little Rock, and the Florida Hospital College of Health Sciences, all of whom have already been enjoying the new platform for months.  There will even be a presentation by the team at the University of Missouri system about its upgrade experience as well. Further, we’ll again have a walk-in feedback room in which our Product Management and Support teams can answer all your upgrade and technical questions, and I’ll likely hold a meeting for anyone who wants to learn more about our cohort upgrade programs. As we say, collaboration is music to our ears, so we feel that New Orleans is the best place for you to learn from the Collaborate team and your peers about the future of the Blackboard Collaborate™ platform.  Block off your calendars now, and I’ll see you in The Big Easy in July!

Did you know that SP8 was shaped by nearly 600 institutions through their participation in Blackboard Community Programs?  The amount of client participation with this release was so impressive, we put together our first ever report on how clients directly impacted the development process of SP8. Full of statistics, client insight and information about the various programs, it provides a clear view of how clients impact Bb Learn every step of the way.  Read it today – SP8: Client Impact on Functionality & Design.  Not sure how this report can help you? No problem.  Based on initial feedback from clients in the Blackboard Idea Exchange, we have complied the top four ways you can leverage this report at your campus or organization: 1.)    Increase confidence in upgrading to SP8 – even if you were not one of the 600 clients involved in providing direct feedback on the product, I am completely confident there is an institution just like yours that was. Through our programs individuals with similar perspectives and challenges have worked with our designers and developers ultimately impacting the way new features were built. 2.)    Generate excitement, awareness and confidence among faculty.  Peter DiFalco from CSU Chico participated in SP8 community programs and is featured in the report.  He will be distributing it to faculty so they “will be more confident to try new features knowing that the staff who support them advocated on their behalf for higher quality, efficiency, and reliability.” 3.)    Inform your users about the various Blackboard community programs that are available. They too can impact a future release.  We solicit participation from system administrators, educators, instructional designers and students – it is a great way to encourage adoption. 4.)    Show it to high level Academic and IT leadership at your institution to demonstrate how Blackboard is openly working with hundreds of organizations like yours on the development and refinement of Blackboard Learn. If you weren’t one of the 600 clients that shaped SP8 learn more about the ways you can impact a future release at blackboard.com/empower.  Start by signing up for the Blackboard Idea Exchange today.  We have programs that range in commitment level and touch every phase of the software development life cycle – there is a program for everyone!

It’s always fascinating to talk to customers and learn how diverse their technology needs are. Blackboard Collaborate™ customers use a wide variety of learning management systems (LMSs), ranging from commercial solutions like Blackboard Learn or Desire2Learn®, to open source installations like Moodle®, Sakai®, and others. Customers tell us the same thing over and over again: They need software partners who can support the learning and collaboration needs of their learners no matter what LMS they have now or may have in the future. A key component of Blackboard Collaborate’s core philosophy is to provide integrations across a variety of LMS and technology portfolios that are on campus. We want to enhance the teaching and learning experience regardless of the LMS or community portal system used. Commitment to Openness – Integrations built by Blackboard and our Partners Our commitment to openness is borne out by the fact that Blackboard Collaborate offers several fully supported integrations with most of the major EDU-focused LMS providers. In addition, we offer customers and other LMS providers access to an API toolkit so they can create custom integrations. Software providers like Agilix (BrainHoney), itslearning, Epsilen and Desire2Learn have already created custom web conferencing integrations. And more partner-developed integrations are on the way later this year. These partnerships support Blackboard Collaborate’s open-integration philosophy. By providing integrations with the most common education-focused LMS providers, across all collaboration capabilities, Blackboard Collaborate helps institutions save on travel and infrastructure costs, while increasing interaction and engagement and improving learning outcomes. Annie Chechitelli, VP Of  Strategy and Operations, on Blackboard Collaborate’s open integrations philosophy.

So you may have heard that with Blackboard Learn’s latest release, Service Pack 8, command-line Snapshot has been deprecated. It’s true, but it’s not as scary as it sounds. There are a couple things to note when we talk about command-line Snapshot’s deprecation: First, all existing command-line Snapshot integrations will NOT be effected by a Service Pack 8 upgrade, and if you have an existing integration it WILL continue to work. Second, Blackboard introduced in Service Pack 6 and further refined in Service Pack 8, the SIS Integration Framework. The framework was created to streamline the way Blackboard Learn interacts with student information systems. The framework gives system administrators a user interface to administrate their SIS integrations and will do the work of your existing command-line Snapshot integration, with some additional functionality.