Products & Services

You did it again.

You suggested.

And we did it again.

We listened.

So we (and you) are happy to introduce our latest join venture, Blackboard Collaborate 12.5. Your product suggestions help make this the most effective version yet.

You recently heard from my counterpart Trent about Blackboard Collaborate Mobile on Android, including Kindle Fire HD, and easy conversion of session recordings to MP3/MP4 formats.  But that’s not all that is new. All that is new

Renee Citlau and her colleagues at Cypress High School in Anaheim, California, were puzzled why a student was performing much better in the online class Citlau taught than in his face-to-face classes, so she asked him why. The answer was heartbreaking.

“I feel more comfortable in my online class because no one can hear my voice and make fun of my accent.”

Renee Citlau, the 2013 Online Teacher of the Year, tells that story not to pull at heartstrings, but to demonstrate the potential of online classes to encourage student engagement and foster a sense of community.

“In the online classroom, it’s so important that community is developed, and we know that because we really have to work at making that online course engaging, or our students aren’t going to come back,” she said.

Renee, an online business teacher at Cypress High School, spearheaded the Anaheim Union High School District’s online program in 2007, and now helps her fellow teachers incorporate online tools into their classrooms. She uses Blackboard Collaborate to meet with students in her online classes through weekly virtual sessions.

We had the honor of sitting down with Renee in our Washington, D.C., offices and hearing from the best in the business what classroom teachers can learn from online teachers. Watch Renee explain the importance of developing community in online classes:

To learn more, check out EdTech: Focus on K-12’s interview with Renee on 5 Must-Have Elements for Every Online Class.

In 2012, we released the first Blackboard Collaborate Mobile app for iOS devices. The immediate response was rewarding: over 60,000 downloads worldwide. Now we’re expanding our reach even further.

Blackboard Collaborate is itself a collaboration. By working closely with our Product Advisory Council, I was able to gather feedback to help guide the future of our mobile initiatives. You asked for Android support and now you have it! We are pleased to announce Blackboard Collaborate web conferencing for Android, which includes the Kindle Fire HD.

At Blackboard Collaborate, we’re always boasting about our web conferencing software’s ability to foster a live online experience that’s almost as good as being there.  But sometimes it’s simply nice to just get everyone together face-to-face. So we were ecstatic to descend upon Atlanta last week for our first-ever Collaborate Now one-day user event where we brought together 100 customers from throughout the Southeast to learn about best practices, tips and tricks, and innovative uses of Blackboard Collaborate.  Collaborate Now featured an opening keynote and roadmap presentation, 12 customer and staff-led presentations, an Ask-the-Expert area, a birds-of-the-feather lunch, and unbridled enthusiasm.

Blackboard Collaborate’s VP of Strategy and Operations Annie Chechitelli and VP of Marketing Valerie Schreiner kicked off the day by providing an overview of our platform and roadmap.  Between Annie’s jokes about how much she ate for breakfast and planned to eat for lunch, she gave a detailed overview of our global customer base as well as the demographics of the schools in attendance in Atlanta.  Val then stepped to the podium to emphasize the fact that the Collaborate product team truly listens to its customers.  She initially discussed a slide from 2011 showing what features Collaborate users most requested two years ago, and then wrapped up by showing how those features have all either been delivered or will be shortly – all because of the active, open dialogue between us and our customers.

Blackboard Collaborate Customers and Partners,

I write today to acknowledge that over the past several weeks your Blackboard Collaborate web conferencing experience may have been below the high standard you expect from us.  I speak for the entire Collaborate organization when I say that we are deeply sorry for this, and we are totally committed to returning our service to the expected levels.  We thank you for your patience as we work to return this important service to the high level of performance you’ve come to enjoy.

Let me start with an executive summary of what’s occurring.  Collaborate has been subjected to a series of distributed denial-of-service attempts, or DDoS.  During these events a large number of connections flood our systems, draining resources and causing unpredictable behavior for end users.  Given the synchronous nature of our solutions, the impact to our service is much more noticeable and impactful.

It’s important to note that at no time have our systems been compromised nor has the Collaborate application failed.  Rather, network congestion caused by the DDoS attempts has prevented our community from enjoying typical levels of performance.

We have now researched and tested a path to resolution.  We have already taken steps to shorten the duration of the disruptions and are implementing a plan to prevent them altogether. It requires that we filter all traffic, and sort out the bad DDoS requests from the good client traffic.  As we implement these changes, there may be some temporary and relatively minor performance degradation, but we expect it to be a small inconvenience that allows us to confidently restore consistent and reliable service by early March.

We’ve emailed details regarding upcoming changes to Collaborate administrators earlier today.  Click here for details.

I want to extend our sincere apologies to not only our customers, but also to the impacted teachers and the students for the resultant service disruptions that these DDoS attempts have caused.  Every student deserves the best educational experience each and every day, and we take our responsibility to facilitate that experience seriously.

If you have questions or want to provide feedback directly related to this topic, please contact us at collaborateconfidently@blackboard.com.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Sincerely,

Maurice Heiblum

President, Blackboard Collaborate