Interactive E-Learning: Here’s What Holds You Back

A New Chapter for Our Moodle-Based SaaS Product

We recently announced our strategic decision to exit the Moodle Certified Partner Program, and restated our fervent commitment to continue to provide clients with the most mature and stable Moodle-based Software as a Service (SaaS) product in the market and continue to support the Moodle project. With this change, we will accelerate investment and development of our SaaS Moodle-based product and continue driving innovation for the Moodle community.

Our decision to leave the Moodle Certified Partner Program does not affect in any way our unwavering support of open source and open standards. We have a very strong admiration for Moodle Pty and its contributions to education and the open-source community.

SaaS as a Differentiator

We are committed to providing our clients with the best possible Saas Moodle-based product on the market. Our Moodle-based SaaS product, introduced in 2008, is now available in Amazon Web Services (AWS) regions around the world. This supports our ability to better focus on further optimizing and expanding our market-leading SaaS operations and support.

Strong Growth

We are a major player in the open-source community with more than 1,000 clients using our Moodle-based product and 20 percent of them have joined in the last year with a growing pipeline. We are adding more than one new client per business day, largely driven by the market’s move to SaaS and our product being the most mature and stable in the market. Accelerating investment in this area will ensure we continue to provide our growing client base with the best possible tools to help solve their most pressing challenges in their organizations and institutions today and into the future.

Continued Investment

We are accelerating investment in important functionality, such as better support of IMS Global standards, enhanced in-product help and support features, continued focus on universal access and deeper integrations with critical third-party partners.

Improved Integration

We are also focused on providing clients with a deeply integrated EdTech platform. In addition to the hundreds of third-party certified plugins we support, we have delivered new tools to the open-source community including our accessibility checker Blackboard Ally and our plagiarism detector SafeAssign. We will continue to focus on bringing new capabilities, services and products to the Moodle community, enhancing the learning experience.

 What This Means for the Open-Source Community

Exiting the Moodle Certified Partner Program will not have any impact on our support of the open-source community and there will be no change in our ability to utilize updates and enhancements from the community. Additionally, there will be no change in the current user experience for clients and no drop-off in our pace of innovation and development. We will continue to contribute code and features back to the Moodle community—and work to move the community forward together.

We will introduce a new name and branding for our Moodle-based SaaS product soon. The new branding will align with the overall Blackboard brand. We hope you will like it.

These investments in innovation and development will ensure that our Moodle-based SaaS product is closely aligned with our overall mission to deliver innovative teaching and learning solutions that meet the evolving needs of institutions and organizations around the world and we look forward to the future.

Please visit the Blackboard Community to join the conversation and share feedback.

 

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A New Chapter for Our Moodle-Based SaaS Product  original post at Blackboard Blog

Using Technology to Promote School Safety

School and district leaders are focused on the most effective ways to ensure a safe and secure learning environment for students and staff. They want and need to be able to secure their school campus and quickly communicate with the broader education community to include parents.

As each day seemingly brings new challenges, educators have unfortunately been forced to consider this issue at depth. At the same time, legislators continue to debate the security issue and school leaders are left to wonder, “What can we do nowto improve the safety and security of our schools?”

The broader debate sometimes leaves out one powerful supporting tool—technology. Technology has proven time and again to help solve today’s challenges, and the safety and security of a school is no exception. Today’s best security practices call for school-wide electronic access control and integrated video surveillance systems that are designed specifically for the education community.

Electronic Access Control

At its simplest, this is made up of electronic locks, card readers, and a central control mechanism. The configuration of these components enables administrators with dynamic options to secure specific access points or doors. Whether it’s an exterior door, hallway door, or school lab, special consideration for securing these areas should be made. The technology to provide electronic access control to schools has become more versatile, sophisticated, and user-friendly. So much so, that it’s now possible to be alerted to intrusions, remotely lockdown a school, and provide momentary unlocking capabilities all from a mobile device.

Video Surveillance

These systems provide the technology that enables real-time awareness and intelligence of what’s occurring at a school. While many schools already have video surveillance systems in place, when integrated with access control systems, these systems exponentially increase their utility. In emergency situations, time is of the essence. When security officials are trying to corroborate information during emergencies, “Is there an intruder? Where is the intruder? Do we need to lock down the building and alert authorities?” being able to take action from a single, integrated system, is critical.

Communicating Effectively with the School Community

As school leaders need to effectively engage and communicate with their school community, this too becomes a critical component to school safety and security. Technology has enabled more effective methods of communication and now empowers school leaders to take immediate, proactive action to stay ahead of any situation by sending voice notifications, text messages, email alerts and social media updates.

The safety and security of a school is one of today’s unfortunate challenges and technology designed specifically to meet these challenges exists today. School leaders must consider implementing effective, new, and integrated technology to ensure a safe and secure learning environment.

To learn more about Blackboard’s security solutions designed for education, please visit Blackboard School Safety.

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Use PowerPoint to Create Custom Videos

Empowering success around the world

As we begin our last day of BbWorld 2018, I want to share some reflections on our global impact and the work we do with clients around the world.

Every year more clients from around the world are making the journey to BbWorld to be a part of our growing global community. This year we welcomed over 200 international delegates from around the globe, including Brazil, Colombia, Chile, U.K., Poland, UAE, Korea, China, and Australia.

What’s been really exciting for me is to see how they are connecting with others and sharing their best practices and unique experiences with our education community at large. Helping to foster that sense of community is part of what excites me about my job at Blackboard. And I’m so proud that we continue to make a huge impact in partnership with our clients around the world as the largest EdTech company.

For the second year, we hosted a summit for the educational leaders from Latin America, with workshops, a dedicated keynote and a roadmap highlights session, all delivered in Spanish and translated in Portuguese.

We also celebrated the signing of the first Center of Excellence in the Russia, Middle East and Africa (RMEA) region through a partnership with the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT), a client of Blackboard for almost two decades and the largest higher education institution in the UAE, with a community of 23,000 students and 2,000 staff based on 16 modern, technology-enhanced campuses.

I’m also thrilled to hear from our clients at BbWorld about the differences they’re making in the lives of students through our integrated, flexible EdTech platform.  And as a result, we are continuing to experience growth in all regions, from South America to the Middle East.

For instance, we recently celebrated our long-term partnerships in Australia with Griffith University, Southern Cross University, James Cook University and Charles Darwin University. The universities all leverage Blackboard Learn to empower students and teachers, and decided to extend their partnerships for an additional five years.

Our clients look to us as a guidepost to help them meet the needs of their students, not only with cutting-edge LMSs, but also with a comprehensive portfolio of solutions and services that will enable institutions to solve the most pressing challenges they are facing, including improving student outcomes, providing an outstanding educational experience on and off campus, and enhancing content accessibility.

We heard a lot of inspiring stories from our clients at BbWorld in the past few days, and here there are others from around the world.

In the U.K., we partnered with the University of Derby, an institution renowned for technology and innovation, with over 17,000 students enrolled in over 300 programs of study. They have always been at the forefront of accessibility, and it’s no surprise that they decided to deploy Blackboard Ally alongside Blackboard Learn to boost content accessibility. The implementation was done in record time and within a month the solution was fully live across the entire university. Results have been positive. Their overall accessibility score jumped four per cent and Ally is helping create a cohesive accessibility strategy across the university.

In Mexico, Instituto Tecnologico de Monterrey (Tec de Monterrey), a leading private multi-campus university that recently moved to Ultra, is making intensive use of Blackboard Collaborate to virtually connect students from multiple campuses. A group of teachers launched the “Professor Avatar Project,” complementing Collaborate with real-time holographic projections and Telepresence Robots to project the instructor’s hologram in the middle of the classroom.

In Colombia, the Government in partnership with Blackboard has been providing access to job training using Blackboard Learn and Collaborate to help tens of thousands of people across the country boost their employability. Following the peace agreement, part of that effort now includes providing training opportunities to former guerrilla fighters.

In the Middle East, the Arab National Bank, a leading financial institution in Saudi Arabia, recently began using Blackboard Learn to deliver on-demand training for employees located across the country. They received the Blackboard Excellence in Training & Development Award for their innovative work.

We’re also bringing the campus ID to Apple devices. Duke University, University of Alabama, University of Oklahoma, Johns Hopkins University, Santa Clara University and Temple University will be among the first to pilot our mobile student credential to securely access buildings on campus. We look forward to expanding to other institutions.

I am really excited about the impact we are having around the world and the incredible work our clients are doing every day together with our teams. I’m looking forward to sharing even more success stories with you in the future.

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Introducing Blackboard Data: Accelerating Impact Through Education Insight

At Blackboard, we realize that the LMS is simply not enough. As we look forward to the digital learning environment of tomorrow, we see a future in which educators and students are provided with flexible solutions, a connected experience and the data-driven insights needed to respond to their core challenges. What this means is that we can no longer think of analytics as a thing that we add on. Instead, we need to think of analytics as an integral and embedded part of the education experience itself.

What is Blackboard Data?

Blackboard data is a unified, cross-portfolio data and reporting platform. Starting in 2019, Blackboard Data will begin rolling out as a core feature across our entire portfolio. It will give clients a single point of access to data from all of their current Blackboard product and service investments. It will also provide institutions with an engaging array of useful reports, surfacing insights about and between activity. Blackboard Data will be available to all Blackboard clients under their existing licensing agreement and will also serve as the future home for new analytics products.  It will leverage the power of the Blackboard portfolio to give our clients access to the knowledge they need in order to take the right action at the right time.

The way we think about analytics is pretty simple. Analytics is meaningless on its own. But when paired with the right needs, the right questions, and a good sense of what you can do with the answer, it becomes a powerful accelerator for human action and decision-making.

We are building Blackboard Data in direct response to feedback from our customers.  Over the past year, we have launched multiple surveys and hosted numerous design workshops that have strongly informed our analytics strategy. In order to create an environment that is rich, open, intentional, and actionable, we are investing even more into understanding the needs and experiences of customers around the globe.  The Blackboard Data Collaborative Program will bring together domain exports from within the Blackboard community to clearly define challenges and develop data-driven solutions. Each cohort will produce a public whitepaper documenting its outcomes while also directly informing Blackboard Data development efforts. If you are interested in joining one of our cohorts, please sign up via the Blackboard Analytics Community Site here.

A Strong History of Surfacing Data

Since 2011, we have developed market-leading solutions to complement the human decision-making process. With Blackboard Analytics for Learn, we are helping institutions to optimize their instructional practices and increase educational quality.  With Blackboard Intelligence, we are helping colleges and universities to eliminate structural barriers to student success and increase institutional performance. With Blackboard Predict, we are helping campuses to identify at-risk students increase coordination as part of an holistic approach to student success. With Blackboard Data, we will leverage the power of the Blackboard portfolio, expanding access to information and accelerating opportunities for action.  With Blackboard Data, we are building a flexible framework for delivering new features and products that will allow institutions to be agile in response to complexity and rapid change.

Starting in 2019, Blackboard Data will automatically be available for current Blackboard Learn SaaS and Ultra and Blackboard Collaborate Ultraclients. Integrations for other products in the Blackboard portfolio are planned.

For the latest news and opportunities to get involved, sign up for our newsletter and join the community today!

 

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Boosting Student and Institutional Success with Attendance Tracking

Tracking attendance is an ages-old problem that institutions around the world continue to face. Educators agree that there is a strong and positive correlation between time spent in the classroom and student success. Therefore, it should be no surprise that institutions around the globe must prove “seat time” to demonstrate academic integrity.

The relevance of tracking attendance is also highlighted in many regulations. For example, in the U.S., universities must prove seat time to earn and maintain accreditation, among other requirements, and publically funded institutions must prove seat time to secure federal financial aid. In the U.K., universities face pressure from student loan lenders to monitor attendance and decrease drop-out rates, a key metric in the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) introduced by the Government. In Australia, tracking attendance for full-fee paying English Language Intensive Courses for Overseas Students (ELICOS) students is a big issue. Student visas can be cancelled if attendance levels are not maintained at 80% or higher and the student can be deported.

While institutions want to associate attendance data with student performance and retention efforts, today’s attendance-tracking solutions do not scale, are mostly manual and consume valuable instruction time. Moreover, with today’s methods, universities do not have real-time access to attendance data across the campus to inform student progression and retention initiatives.

To help solve these challenges, Blackboard is bringing to market Blackboard Attendance, a scalable and flexible solution for tracking attendance that will free instructors’ time, reduce the administrative burden and make attendance data readily available across the institution. Announced At BbWorld 2018, Blackboard Attendance is planned to work across all instructional modalities (face-to-face, online, and hybrid) and all class sizes, with attendance data readily available to enable student progression and retention initiatives to drive student success.

To learn more about Blackboard’s planned Attendance solution and how it will help address your attendance challenges, watch this conceptual illustration:

* Statements regarding our product development initiatives, including new products and future product upgrades, updates or enhancements represent our current intentions, but may be modified, delayed or abandoned without prior notices and there is no assurance that such offering, upgrades, updates or functionality will become available unless and until they have been made generally available to our customers.

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