by admin
Manchester Musings
Manchester, England is not only famous for Manchester United and Manchester City soc–, er, football. This ancient city is also well known for its Roman fort at Castlefield, as a center of the Industrial Revolution, as the home of Granada Studios and, most recently across the river, the development of the Salford Media City, future home to the BBC and a number of other media businesses. Manchester once again seems poised to create a new type of urban environment.
Blackboard’s European clients continue to set a high bar for our global practice as we look at the ways in which institutions continue to evolve the use of online technologies to engage their students and assess institutional progress. Within the UK, we have seen terrific examples of a leadership and innovation in online teaching and learning, in particular the community of practice, as evidenced by the Durham University-led Users Group, and also the development of new tools such as Dundee’s peer- and self-assessment tool, which has now been incorporated as a core part of the Blackboard Learning System.
Aside from a number of other good reasons, these were driving factors in our choice of Manchester as location for this year’s BbWorld Europe – taking place in a few short months: May 12-14. We expect we’ll see many of you there – last year more than 300 clients attended this event when it was held in Nice, France.
The event will begin with a welcome keynote by Professor Colin Stirling, associate vice president of University of Manchester, on Monday evening. U of M, the Sunday Times University of the Year (2006), will also be hosting a number of training courses on Blackboard products and online pedagogy the week of the conference.
We are also very enthused to report that Michael Chasen, Blackboard’s CEO, will be attending and expects to demonstrate some of the things we are working on in product development during his Tuesday morning session. Since the merger of WebCT and Blackboard, we’ve worked with hundreds of clients from around the world to incorporate the increasingly sophisticated uses to which the Blackboard Academic Suite is being applied, taking advantage of new Web 2.0 capabilities, and updating our user interface to appeal to a new generation of students.
During this process, the BIE Steering Committee and Client Strategy Council have ensured that we would not lose sight of the need to provide continuity for faculty and administrators who have devoted enormous energy to developing courses and communities based on the available toolsets. We’re eager to gather your feedback about what we are working on for the future.
The event will begin with a welcome keynote by Professor Colin Stirling, associate vice president of University of Manchester, on Monday evening. U of M, the Sunday Times University of the Year (2006), will also be hosting a number of training courses on Blackboard products and online pedagogy the week of the conference.
We are also very enthused to report that Michael Chasen, Blackboard’s CEO, will be attending and expects to demonstrate some of the things we are working on in product development during his Tuesday morning session. Since the merger of WebCT and Blackboard, we’ve worked with hundreds of clients from around the world to incorporate the increasingly sophisticated uses to which the Blackboard Academic Suite is being applied, taking advantage of new Web 2.0 capabilities, and updating our user interface to appeal to a new generation of students. During this process, the BIE Steering Committee and Client Strategy Council have ensured that we would not lose sight of the need to provide continuity for faculty and administrators who have devoted enormous energy to developing courses and communities based on the available toolsets. We’re eager to gather your feedback about what we are working on for the future.
And of course the conference is best known for the varied and clever presentations from academics and technologists from our client institutions – we expect to see several dozen such presentations on motivating faculty and students, best practices for change management, innovation in and out of the classroom, and other topics suggested by your extended set of colleagues from Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
In the coming weeks, keep an eye out for more information about this conference here and on our conference Web site. Hope to see you in Manchester!
