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The Shalom Hartman Institute is the leading center for Jewish thought and education, with venues in Jerusalem, Los Angeles and New York. Under its mission to strengthen Jewish peoplehood, identity, pluralism and ensure that Judaism becomes a considerable force for good in the 21st century, they have created a curriculum with programs that transform and strengthen the Jewish community through its leaders.

One of the greatest differences of the Institute is that its classes have a component of discussion between colleagues and professors about the writings and study documents of each of the classes, while through its programs seek to transform the vision of the leaders who will take these learnings to their entire community. 

For the Shalom Hartman Institute, presence is a fundamental part for the development of their classes and when the pandemic took place in March 2020 with the total closure of the venues, they had react quickly and effectively so as not to miss classes and of course continue with the quality that they usually offer.

"The time we had to implement Blackboard was very short; we engaged in conversations in August and by October we were supposed to  have everything installed and ready."

Alon Hodir - Chief Information Officer

The main challenge for the institute was to unify its virtual education system, have all the materials on the same platform and carry out the classes at the same time, in such a way that they could continue teaching without any interruption.

Being a new challenge for the institute, they decided to start the implementation with their main program, "Be'eri program for Pluralistic Jewish-Israeli Identity", which seeks to educate high school students and teachers in Jewish and democratic values. This program implied a very high component of connection with students and, hence, having a modern and easily accessible platform was an indispensable feature and thanks to Blackboard Learn, they managed to achieve the connection they were looking for.

"With a short response time and in a timely manner, 25 of our teachers were able to deliver this program to 140 schools" - Alon Hodir CIO

Thanks to the fast implementation and training of Blackboard Learn, the Shalom Hartman Institute was able to resume this program asynchronously and with all the material on the same platform, which was an added value for both, the institute and the teachers.

"Being able to go back to the platform and finding all the material or attending the class that maybe they couldn't attend is a huge benefit for all of our students."

For the Shalom Hartman Institute, the implementation was successful from the beginning; but despite the fact that they managed to unify all their materials to continue asynchronously with the classes, they still needed a very important part of their face-to-face classes - the discussion between colleagues and teachers through a panoramic view of all the participants when the virtual meetings will take place.

This is why after a consultation from the Blackboard team, they implemented the Blackboard Collaborate with the functionality of "Gallery view" even while this functionality was being tested, and they managed to complement the asynchronous classes with synchronous classes from the same platform.

Despite the short usage time, Alon Hodir considers the entire implementation successful due to the quick response of this implementation. With Blackboard Learn they managed to go further and continue classes in an unexpected situation.

Definitely this virtual transformation is a great achievement for the institute, as this year, they expected to implement more programs synchronously and asynchronously through Blackboard Learn.

Within these new implementations, the Shalom Hartman institute faces a new challenge: creating a program where, through the use of virtual meetings with the same community, a learning space is created - a program that they expect to implement at their headquarters in the United States.