Professional Education

This year, The American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) is hosting their annual conference in Denver – will you be there? If so, be sure to add Blackboard booth #425 to your conference agenda so you don’t miss out on any of the fun!

1. Find out how to take your training & development programs social and mobile At the Blackboard booth, you’ll find out how to use the latest technology to add a more social and mobile experience to your training programs. We’ll showcase: • Sales Training Integration with salesforce.com • Mobile Training • Live Virtual Training Sessions

We live in a time where much of the information we need in our daily lives is available on demand through one-touch access to the Internet.  This is in turn is causing many of us to expect similar instant access to work-related information anytime, anywhere. Since we are used to having this vast array of resources and knowledge available constantly at our fingertips, it comes as little surprise to find that a growing trend in professional education today is the use of on-demand or self-paced learning.

You may have already heard about the flipped classroom or Khan Academy concepts, which embody one form of a self-paced learning.  In these models, learners listen to lectures and read classroom texts and home while completing assignments in the classroom (under the guidance of an instructor).  In other words, homework and lectures are “flipped,” allowing learners to take in material at their own pace and maximize time spent with their instructors. But how can we go even further to extend such self-paced learning in the workplace? We want to increasingly meet our learners’ desires for on-demand information, but still retain a high quality educational experience.

When members of the Blackboard team attended Cloudforce last year, we had recently announced the integration of salesforce.com with our Blackboard Learn platform.  A year later, we are excited to report that Blackboard Learn for Sales™ is already helping businesses leverage learning for sales results– and we took that excitement back to Cloudforce.

This year’s Cloudforce keynote address was delivered by the dynamic Vivek Kundra, former CIO of the U.S. federal government and current Executive Vice President of Emerging Markets at salesforce.com.  Kundra is an innovator in cloud computing technology and policy, and has a wealth of experience in helping organizations streamline digital resources to increase efficiency. At Cloudforce, Kundra spoke on the future of cloud computing and the impact of today’s “social revolution” across industries, from governance to sales.

I was especially interested in the discussion that took place throughout the day on leveraging social networks for business, especially examples of companies that build social networks specifically to engage with their clients.  This seems like a great way to implement the social enterprise in a holistic way, allowing sales team members and clients to foster relationships and maintain open channels of communication. Here are some of my favorite #Cloudforce tweets from the day:

The use of technology is being accelerated across nearly every industry -  healthcare, finance, automotive – and especially in education. But how can you be ahead of the curve? Join Dr. Curtis Bonk at BbWorld 2012 where he will speak on the topic “Technology Adoption”.

Dr. Curtis Bonk’s presentation “Stretching the Edges of Technology-Enhanced Teaching: From Tinkering to Tottering to Totally Extreme Learning” will take a deep dive into what is considered the new “norm” in the classroom: Mobile, virtual, and telepresence technologies and how you can expand into other technologies.

If you are thinking about how BbWorld will help you learn about the how to incorporate technology into your everyday life just wonder: have you ever wished that someone could read your mind? Well, Dr. Curtis Bonk probably can! A former Educational Psychologist, Dr. Bonk is a Professor of Instructional Systems Technology at Indiana University and President of CourseShare. He has coauthored several widely used books, including The World is Open: How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education (2009).

Whether you are moving toward a blended learning strategy by embedding shared online videos, simulations, timelines, collaborative groups, and open access articles into your courses or building your course from the ground up around the limitless edTech options available, Dr. Curtis Bonk will touch on each part of the spectrum and provide examples on how to incorporate social and digital components into courses.

We are also thrilled to announce that Dr. Curtis Bonk will be co-lecturing an Online Open Course through CourseSites on “Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success.” Learn more information and sign up here. Find out more about Dr. Bonk, check out his blog, TravelinEdMan which includes reflections on his speaking experiences around the world.

In today’s fast-paced environment, the key to a successful sales team is collaboration. Members of your sales team must be able to communicate with one another in real time, getting the information they need quickly, staying ahead of business trends, and exchanging best practices.

Blackboard Collaborate is an ideal solution to build a social enterprise by fostering teamwork and enabling knowledge sharing within your sales team. The numerous features of Collaborate can be leveraged to deepen these channels of communication and knowledge exchange, both of which are crucial to winning sales:

Web conferencing takes your online meeting capabilities beyond those of the average customer meeting or training. With the ability to show and share presentations and applications on your desktop, you’ll be able to demonstrate the value of your product quickly and easily.