Products & Services

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!

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.

As many of you are aware Service Pack 8 for Release 9.1 debuted a few weeks ago. Since December I have been working with about 100 clients who have been testing Service Pack 8.  These clients have been working in the product, testing the upgrade and piloting it with their users so they have a very clear sense of what this Service Pack means in terms of how it will impact their users. Chris Bray, Blackboard Administrator from University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, and I spent some time discussing Service Pack 8 last week.

Chris Bray, University of Arkansas

Overall how do you feel about the upgrade process to SP8?

We participated in the SP8 upgrade experience beta and have been running SP8 on a test server for a couple of months now. I upgraded my pre-production/test environment from SP7 HF1 to the GA version of SP8 on February 8th. The upgrade process went really well, and I’ve been making my own notes of what I’ve done after the upgrade that’s different than my usual upgrades.  I have my notes and a number of other resources for myself and my team at http://bbadmin.uark.edu/sp8 . This page might be helpful for other clients investigating SP8 and planning their upgrade. The only difference from other upgrades I see is tweaking some settings in order to use the new SP8 functionality. I scrapped my previous theme customizations in favor of the Bb Learn ‘2012 theme’, which is what we started calling the new SP8 theme on the beta. I’m still researching and working on some items but pretty excited about the possibilities with SP8.

“Sweet looking theme, a vast improvement over the current Bb Learn Theme, the revision in look and feel makes it a lot smoother to use.” — overheard during usability testing

Early reactions to the new system theme in Service Pack 8 have been overwhelmingly positive. Users that have seen it love its clean and modern look. UI changes in the new System Theme, “Blackboard Learn 2012” offer a change in the look and feel, but the functionality of the system remains exactly the same. So, what does that change to the look and feel mean to the people that support teaching and learning on campus? Instructional Designers sometimes cringe when they see interface changes because it often means changing screenshots used throughout tutorials, tip sheets and other training materials. I lead a team of instructional designers at Blackboard, and like you, we spend a considerable amount of time ensuring that our training materials, help documentation, and video tutorials help people meet their teaching and learning objectives. Before you dive in, we want you to understand that the new theme is optional. The original 9.1 default theme will still be available and Administrators can make the switch when the time is right. Existing customizations are unaffected. The new theme can be applied on a timeline of your own. Trying out the new theme is low-risk since it has no functional changes. If your campus is excited about a new modern look for Blackboard Learn, read on to find out what we think the impact will be and our ideas for managing the transition to a new look and feel (hint: we don’t think it is as big an effort as it first appears).

Last week, Joshua Kim of Inside Higher Ed, posted some thought provoking questions in his blog evaluating Service Pack 8, the latest release of Blackboard Learn.  After commenting that the new UI of SP8 looks “clean and modern”, he raised the following question: “How big a deal would an upgrade be?” Realizing that some of our clients may be asking the same question, I felt compelled to respond.  The short answer is that the new look and feel offered with SP8 would not negatively impact an upgrade decision for 2 reasons:

• Flexibility and Choice
• Early Client Validation

Flexibility and Choice Change management has been a core focus for us in recent years, and SP8 is no exception. In addition to having the choice to introduce new features and a modernized UI when they’re ready, through our Service Pack model, our clients also have the flexibility to choose which features and UI theme to deploy with SP8.