Welcome

When our team of volunteers from Blackboard arrived at the Capital Area Food Bank we knew we had a sweaty, dirty job ahead of us and we were excited about it.  Before we rolled up our sleeves and snapped on our latex gloves we got an orientation to the mission and reach of this vital link in the welfare of the working poor in our nation’s capital. Hunger and malnutrition in America is real.  Some might find that statement oxymoronic, especially in light of the frequent studies about growing obesity in this country.  Hunger and malnutrition isn’t always visible, it is all around us and rarely discussed.  Hunger’s negative effects can be seen in schools, at work, and in homes.  Children have a diminished capacity to learn; adults can’t work as effectively; and seniors are more prone to illness.

You already have Salesforce working for you to optimize sales.  Your numbers are good, but you know there’s always room for growth.  So where does training fit in that picture?   What’s the real ROI on sales training?  How do you measure it?  We’ll address these and other questions in a half hour Twitterchat on Thursday, November 17^th, from 2 – 2:30pm EDT. Our chat will be led by Matt Brown (@Mattybme), Salesforce MVP and Blackboard staffer leading the integration of the two platforms.  (You haven’t checked out Blackboard Learn for Sales yet?)  Read more about Matt here.

As a Blackboard marketing professional, I often communicate the virtues of virtual collaboration.  What resonates most these days as it relates to virtual collaboration are the cost savings that can be achieved from travel avoidance.  You can save a lot of money by shifting learning and working online using real-time communication tools like web conferencing, IM, and Skype.  Some of our Blackboard Collaborate customers have measured it as $2,000 per meeting.  The annualized savings is quite impressive. Based on our customer stories and my own experience as a remote, home-based worker, I am convinced that live online collaboration can result in solid outcomes – more learning, increased productivity, improved focus, and solid relationships with people in your virtual community, whether colleagues, bosses, or like-minded professionals.  So why would you work or learn any other way?

After 10 years of using Blackboard Inc. applications, Kingston University experienced tremendous growth, usage and adoption. In fact, over 95% of students and more than 80% of academic staff use Blackboard Learn™ as their virtual learning environment (VLE). As the years passed and adoption grew, the time came for Kingston to re-evaluate their learning technologies. In consultation with faculty and students across all disciplines, the evaluation committee engaged in a year-long review which included a functional assessment of Blackboard Learn, ™ 9.1 and other open source alternatives. The evaluation was prompted by a variety of reasons but alignment to the University’s new Learning, Teaching and Assessment Strategy was especially important. To learn more about Kingston’s evaluation experience, we spoke with Dr. Tim Linsey, the Director of e-Learning at Kingston University, who identified the primary factors that contributed to their decision to select Learn, 9.1.

Four of our clients recently participated in a panel discussion at EDUCAUSE 2011 in Philadelphia to share top ways they use collaboration technologies to improve learning and increase efficiency on campus. I’m happy to share a recap of that session, Four Reasons to Integrate Collaborative Tools into Your LMS, from one of our panelists, Kara Monroe, Assistant Vice President for the Center for Instructional Technology  at Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana. Guest post by Kara Monroe, Assistant Vice President for the Center for Instructional Technology, Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana One of the things that I love about being a customer of Blackboard Collaborate is the sense of community within the client base.  I love talking with other clients and potential clients about the products and how they can transform teaching, learning, and work at an institution.  Therefore, I was so pleased to get the opportunity to speak on a panel with other Blackboard Collaborate clients at EDUCAUSE: Cory Stokes from the University of Utah, Phil O’Hara from Dalhousie University and Mike Scheuermann from Drexel University.