Helping Global Higher Education Students Succeed with Our Free Blackboard Learn Tool
This content was previously published by Blackboard, now part of Anthology. Product and/or solution names may have changed.
We all know that successful students look for help completing their assignments and understanding difficult concepts. They look for resources to help them bridge financial gaps, deal with loneliness, choose a career and find a job.
But not all students are successful in finding resources when they need them. And often, students chose services unaffiliated with the University, that may be of questionable quality and integrity. Once students leave their learning environment and search for a service to help them, University stakeholders have little insight into where they go and what they use.
That’s where Blackboard Assist comes in. Assist is designed to encourage students to find the help they need from trusted, vetted sources and to make that help easy to find.
Our vision for Blackboard Assist is to build a set of student success services that support your goals of advancing learning and increasing student engagement. To provide those services when and where the student needs them – right in Blackboard Learn.
We launched Blackboard Assist in November, 2020, with two amazing flagship partners with plans to bring in additional partners and student services throughout 2021.
Barnes and Noble Education and their service, Bartleby, was a clear choice for Blackboard Assist because of their approach to homework and writing help. The Bartleby help and write services improve student learning by helping students understand the problems they are trying to solve, not just by giving them the right answer.
When a student comes to Bartleby with a question, subject matter experts strive to help that student understand the concepts behind the question and provide guidance that helps the student learn. Bartleby does not simply answer the question for the student, or rewrite a student’s paper. Bartleby helps the student understand how to answer the question or how to improve her paper.
Likewise, GoPeer was another clear choice for Blackboard Assist. GoPeer is a truly unique tutoring platform, closely aligned to academic goals. GoPeer provides students access to more than 17,000 tutors globally across almost all subjects. Students use the platform to meet with and record their sessions with tutors they choose. Student lessons are archived and they can return to them anytime for review. But what really sets GoPeer apart is that they offer the chance for students to also become tutors and to earn $20 an hour doing so. GoPeer helps advance learning and increase student engagement by providing opportunities for student to learn, to tutor and earn money.
Blackboard Assist will continue to help students when and where they need it. You can expect us to vet and carefully curate select third-party services that share our mission to advance learning, increase student engagement and success of all students.
Ready to get started?
Talk with your institution’s system administrator or Blackboard Learn administrator about enabling Blackboard Assist at your institution.
Here are some resources that can help you get started:
Assist help site & Toolkit:
https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Administrator/SaaS/Tools_Management/Blackboard_Assist
Getting started, department services template:
Read how Blackboard Assist helped improve engagement and retention at EPCC:
https://www.blackboard.com/resources/improving-engagement-and-retention-through-blackboard-assist