Higher Ed

This weekend at the American Council of Education conference,  Blackboard Student Services announced with Hobsons, one of the leading companies in recruitment, communication and student success solutions for colleges and universities, a partnership that will offer current and prospective client institutions complementary services from each company that will help enhance the process of delivering support to students in all aspects of the student lifecycle. Both Blackboard and Hobsons offer complementary services to our individual client bases and we often find our solutions working together in different parts of the same institutions.  Through this partnership, we will provide our current and future clients a more streamlined integration of our separate offerings. Colleges and universities will now have the option of working with TWO market leaders through integrated services, support and technology in various aspects of the campus experience such as:

• The development of marketing strategies,
• Proactive recruitment and outreach efforts,
• Continuous live, Web and mobile support of financial aid and enrollment information to improve enrollment conversions,
• Increasing student retention, and more.

“Student expectations have changed and there is high demand for 24/7 access to information and real-time responses,” said Craig Chanoff, general manager of Blackboard Student Services. “While student support organizations within institutions try to meet these expectations, more and more universities are relying on technology to gain efficiencies. We are excited to partner with Hobsons to give institutions the option of working with two market leaders to build and maintain relationships with their students.” To learn more, check out the press release announcing the exciting new partnership. In other ACE conference news, we also announced a renewed partnership and a $700,000 in-kind gift to support the ACE Fellows Program, which prepares senior leaders to serve colleges and universities nationwide. Through this give, we have made Blackboard Learn™, Blackboard Colalborate™, and Blackboard Mobile™ available to the ACE Fellows Program, enabling greater communication between ACE Fellows and program instructors, greater collaboration with higher education leaders around the world, and provide a central location for program logistics, assignments, resources and online discussions.