BPP University College Virtual Learning News VLE related news and support for BPP University College staff

After the recent purchase of Angel, you might have expected that would be the focus of the Blackboard keynote.  However, Bb pulled another big story out of the bag – namely they had completed another purchase, this time of TerriblyClever (TC).  TC will become the MobileEdu brand within the Blackboard family.

In many ways it makes sense for Blackboard – their own attempts at iPhone tool development (i.e. BbSync) have not gone down too well with users and they are no longer the ‘new kids on the block’: TC bring a host of recent-Stanford graduates on board, with new skill sets for Bb to make use of.

The quick demo of what TC have built for Duke, Stanford and others showed some nice features – albeit all a bit American (i.e. a high focus on University sport results) and campus-centric (i.e. mapping room locations, etc).  An online demo of the Duke tool is available if you want to check it out.

Further resources on the news:

• an older article which, partly, compares the Stanford development to Blackboard’s own attempts.
• just one of the loads of blog posts on the topic

As for other news: there were promises that Blackboard will take on Angel’s customer service focus to improve their own user support, more support for open initiatives and that moves are underway to unify the code base not just of WebCT and Blackboard customers but also Angel too.

A demo of the ‘next version of NG’ (NG being the ‘Next Generation’ product idea launched last year) was shown with some nice new features:

• ‘At a glance’ module: a new tool that appears on a tab and summarises various key bits of information.
• Some new content types – included in built searching of YouTube with improved embedding options.  Similar to YouTube, Blackboard will also be linking to a directory of NBC news reports via a new partnership (presumably this will be US only but we’ll see I guess).
• Easier integration with iTunesU.
• Embeded Echo360 – a limited licence with Echo360 for lecture capture which can then be expanded if needed (this is US only in the trial stage – although when I spoke to them they were keen to see if it could be expanded to Europe).
• Kindle integration: Blackboard users can send content to their Kindle for offline reading.
• Wikis in courses – Bb’s own Wiki tool on its way to compete with the Learning Objects tool.
• ‘Parent Dashboard’ for school installations so parents can check on student progress – which might be useful for our student sponsers.  In addition, ‘lesson planning’ tools will be included which, whilst aimed at schools, might actually be useful for agreegating resources, especially if different people are authoring and teaching sessions.
• A new style for Learning Units which makes them look even better.
• ‘Course files’ – an aggregation point for all files: not sure how well this fits in with the use of Data Store, etc.: one to keep an eye on though.
• ‘Textbook and materials’ content type where an ISBN can be entered and information on the book will automatically be displayed: more for those schools requiring students to buy books but seemed quite good, especially as the mock-up had examples where links to previews of content is available online (‘search inside’, etc).
• Acxiom authentication inbuilt to meet the needs for increasingly online security in the US Higher Education Act but also of interest to us regarding the control of remote examinations.  A trial of this tool was recently covered in the JOLT journal.

Some figures from the keynote:

- total delegates for BBWorld09 =1500-2000??

- number of clients now hosted by Blackboard = 630+