Category: Blackboard Guru Posts

What Blackboard Needs To Say (and do) At Blackboard World 2018

Posted on by Terry Patterson

It has been a few years since I’ve penned a note to Blackboard before a Blackboard World. The last three years I haven’t shared my thoughts, but that ends now. Blackboard brings its clients and partners together at the Orlando World Center Marriott. Ally is a game changer. In October 2016, Blackboard purchased Fronteer, a UK based educational products and services company. It’s flagship product, Ally, was pushed to market by Blackboard. For those who don’t know, Ally reviews content in a learning management system, scores how well the content meets accessibility requirements, and helps develop alternative formats for students

Issues with Elsevier – Entitled to Too Much

Posted on by Terry Patterson

Elsevier recently decided to shut down its current LMS. Now instructors and LMS system administrators must address content integrations between learning management systems and the company’s Evolve service.  Blackboard Learn environments integrate with Evolve using an LTI/SOAP integration. Blackboard admins deal with these requests from publishers on a regular basis. However, this specific integration creates concerns for them and shows the company’s young experience with Blackboard Learn and this type of integration. The main reason for concern comes from Elsevier requested entitlements for its integration. But what do these entitlements do? I sought to find some additional information on the

Sufferin’ A SCORM Showstopper

Posted on by Terry Patterson

  Many of my Blackboard admin colleagues’ blood pressures rise when we talk about SCORM. SCORM (Shareable Content Object Reference Model) was developed by the US Secretary of Defense as part of their Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative. These standards and specifications were set in 2000 and haven’t had a major upgrade since 2010. However many institutions developed content using this standard which can be implemented with Moodle, Sakai, and Blackboard. Blackboard and SCORM have not been the greatest of bedfellows over the past few years. First Blackboard hasn’t been developing its own SCORM player during this time. Up until 2010,

How Qwickly was quickly our instructor’s favorite Blackboard tool @ UA-PTC

Posted on by Terry Patterson

One of the great opportunities I have in my position at UA-PTC is the ability to bring in awesome products that help our faculty. Qwickly falls into that category. We’ve been using the tool integrated into Blackboard for the past semester. During that time, instructors became very pleased with what the tool did to improve their use of Blackboard. This past summer, we were looking for a tool that would help us collect student attendance and participation in all our courses. This tool needed a simple interface which was easy for instructors to use. It also needed flexibility for a

A Review of Blackboard Instructor

Posted on by Terry Patterson

This week at Blackboard World, Blackboard introduced it’s new major mobile application, Blackboard Instructor. This comes as many LMS companies have either developed mobile friendly versions of their application or published their own mobile applications. In 2015, I reviewed the Blackboard Student app (now simply called Blackboard) which you can see here. Since that time Blackboard had worked to develop that app and enhance it. (Add opinion here). Iterations of the Blackboard Instructor app Let’s take a brief stroll down mobile strategy of Blackboard. Blackboard originally started with the Blackboard Mobile Learn app. A lackluster wade into the mobile world

A + B = AtoZ – How Alphabet might be the dark horse in buying Blackboard

Posted on by Terry Patterson

The EdTech world started buzzing when Providence Equity Partners, current owner of Blackboard, was looking to auction off the EdTech giant for three billion dollars which is twice what they paid for the company in October 2011. Since then many have pondered and pontificated about who would buy the company. Some believe Pearson, a major […]

A Review of the New Blackboard Community Site

Posted on by Terry Patterson

During Blackboard World 2015, Blackboard made many announcements about their products, but none (in my opinion) with more impact than a new community site. I was lucky to provide a t-shirt design which Blackboard printed and gave away to anyone who signed up for the new site. During the conference, over 700 people signed up […]

Blackboard Developers Conference 2015 – Day One Thoughts

Posted on by Terry Patterson

Greetings friends and admin neighbors. The first day of Blackboard World 2015 has closed. There have been many discussions, good and bad, and a ball of confusion. Some of the topics will be covered in upcoming keynotes, so I won’t steal anyone’s thunder. However I do want to go over some things that I heard […]

Blackboard Mobile Apps – Lots of Polish, But Not Much Promise (Part 1 – Bb Student)

Posted on by Terry Patterson

Last year marked the fifth anniversary of Blackboard’s step into the mobile realm with it’s purchase of TerriblyClever in 2009. Over the past five years the company has grown in the marketplace with several products. The first was a the creation of a semi-customizable mobile app for organizations using the Blackboard Mobile Central platform later […]