Products & Services

We’ve been talking about ANGEL 8.0 for a while now—since before the merger with Blackboard—and now it’s here.  Yesterday we announced the general availability of ANGEL 8.0.  So, what’s the big deal (when you’ve been told it’s a small update)? There are some big benefits for ANGEL clients who upgrade to ANGEL 8.0.  First, this is the only fully supported ANGEL release with service packs to be planned through the end of life of ANGEL in October 2014.  These service packs will provide continued support of product issues that arise.  ANGEL 7.4 moves to Operational Support in October 2012 at which time no further service packs will be planned, though security vulnerabilities will continue to be resolved on both code lines.

For those of you who are curious about what the new Institutional Hierarchy feature in Blackboard Learn 9.1 is all about, I wanted to share a short presentation from BbWorld that provides a quick overview. This presentation discusses how Institutional Hierarchy allows you to delegate administrative privileges in a way that parallels your real-world institution. You can view the presentation below. And to learn more about this feature and the many others that are part of the full Blackboard Learn platform with Community Engagement and Content Management, join us for a webinar on Wednesday at 2:00pm Eastern.

By the end of 2009, Brunel University had come to a crossroads with their flagship learning management system. Their options were clear; either, recommit to Blackboard, the owners of their WebCT virtual learning environment or, alternatively, migrate to an open source platform used by some institutions in the UK. I spoke with Alex Osmond, Project Manager of VLE Transition at Brunel University, to sift through their internal and external documentation and, most importantly, pick the brain of someone who was involved in one of the toughest decisions an e-Learning Department can face.

Entering into our second Back to School season, the On Demand Learning Center continues to provide popular video tutorials and quick start guides to support students and teachers working in Blackboard Learn. After our first full year of recording statistics, we logged over 1 million page views! If you haven’t yet visited On Demand, you’ll find lots of short how-to videos and getting started guides covering course design, tool use, and much more. The On Demand Learning Center content is sorted into four main areas: • Understanding and Building Your Course • Communicating and Collaborating • Assessing Learners • For Students

Guest post by Eric Kunnen, Director of Distance Learning and Instructional Technologies, Grand Rapids Community College, and a member of the Ask Dr. C program, a free question and answer service for Blackboard users. Most faculty simply do not have time to learn costly, complex solutions for recording and distributing their lectures, but many tools can provide instructors with effective ways of redistributing classroom sessions and, ultimately, improve the learning experience for students. Typically, lecture capture utilities include a video of the computer screen and audio overlayed by the instructor. Occasionally, there is also video of the instructor or whiteboard/document camera which allows student to see what the faculty member is writing on the whiteboard or showing to the class through a video camera.  Lecture capture tools on the market today include Tegrity, echo360, MediaSite, Accordent Capture Station, Camtasia Relay, and even some open source options like Panopto*.