Innovation & Refinement: Mobile Platform & Core Features

Recently I’ve been reflecting on “innovation” and our approach to it here at Blackboard.  I’m often asked questions on this topic.  About how we define innovation and where we focus it.  And whether we can sustain it as the company grows larger and enters different markets and product categories.   Our releases this spring offer a great backdrop for reflection.  We’re juxtaposing the radically new (like our sweet new native iPad application for Bb Mobile Learn) with a release of Bb Learn 9.1 that’s more of a story of refinement to product quality and instructor.

Our core course delivery product, for example, is a mature product with a well established and diverse user community.  As a result, our goals for applying innovation there are focused more now on how we listen to clients more effectively, how we encapsulate their advice into product refinements, and how we deliver those refinements in ways that make it easier for clients to help users manage and adjust to the changes they come with.  A big part of that involves reviewing every part of our support and service infrastructure and making continual changes to improve the levels we offer our clients.  And while not declaring victory in these areas, I’m very pleased with the positive notice we’ve had that these steady, incremental experience and quality innovations are delivering an improved client experience at Blackboard.

But there are other areas of client need that require a wholly different kind of innovation approach.  Mobile, and its ability to extend and enrich learning, is a great example.  Here, our clients are facing a sudden change in the landscape of student use of computing devices.  It’s a major change in context.  And one that requires something very different than the steady refinement we’re currently focused on for our core products.  We needed innovation in its rawest form.  A bold, imaginative approach to put forward a solution broad enough to respond to the major changes mobile devices will bring to campus communities and to the changing interests of teachers and learners now more enabled by their mobile devices than ever before.

As we pondered just how large the impact of mobile would be, we recognized that this approach would require a new team that really understood these new technologies natively.  And so we acquired and integrated the leading firm in this emerging area, Terriblyclever LLC, in 2009.  We poured investment into strengthening their platform to support a truly mobile campus community: Bb Mobile Central.  And with Bb Mobile Learn we’re now aiming to create a very new dynamic in access and utility that can really have an impact on student engagement and the learning experience as we know it (for a glimpse, check out this video showing Bb Mobile Learn on iPad). 

And so as I near the conclusion of my first year at Bb I’m quite pleased with the different kinds of “innovation” that are helping us improve the client experience in core product areas while at the same time allowing us to mobilize rapidly around an emerging area like mobile and the larger forces for change that it brings.  The 2010 year promises to be one of our most innovative, ever.  And as I consider what’s to come, I’m very encouraged that we’re finding a harmony in these types of innovation that will appeal much to the clients we serve.

Cheers,

Ray

Comments

[Charles Severance]

Nicely done. I think that the iPad will be a very strong tool for consuming educational material from K12 through higher education. I think that the hard part will be developing natural interfaces to "create new material" in these mobile environments. So I am glad to see that you have spent some time thinking about solving the harder problem of creating and adding information as well as reading and viewing information from mobile devices.

[Dean]

I am anxiously awaiting my iPad so I can start testing this. I really think that the US has been far behind the rest of the world in utilizing mobile devices for learning and this is a great step in the right direction.

I am dismayed at the approach of developing a few avenues for "free," namely wi-fi Apple devices and Sprint network devices. This leaves the rest of the student population out unless the school has lots of money.

Which seems to be a common Bb strategy lately. We'll give you a little bit for free (Wimba pronto *basic*, a handful of Axiom licenses), but if you really want to use it, it will be $$$$. In the case of Mobile, it means paying an amount equivalent to your license fee. Which I can understand if you want to do the full mobile development like Stanford or Duke, with services and GPS navigation of the campus and such. But if all I want is for my students to get access to their courses, why should it be a full license fee level amount?

Hopefully, this is due to a SHORT term partnership with Sprint and Bb will realize that all students should get mobile access, no matter their carrier. And that making schools pay for that ability when it is free for certain devices/carriers is wrong.

These are my opinions only and definitely do not reflect the position or thoughts of my school.

[Ray]

Thanks for the comments Chuck, Dean. Dean - I actually just wrote a new post that tackles some of the questions you raise here, and I'll point you there for more context: http://www.rayhblog.com/blog/2010/04/mobile-learning-our-goldilocks-problem.html

[Simon Wood]

I was very impressed with the demo of the iPad app at Swansea, but to my surprise the innovation that impressed me the most, more than going mobile, was the multi-tasking support in the iPad app.

This seems an interesting example of where radically new innovation can develop aspects that (I hope) have the potential to be fed back into the evolving refinements to Blackboard Learn?

[Kim]

Listening to clients about Core Features?

How about a secure browser feature? How about keeping students from doing cut-and-paste or screen capture to save or print questions? How about keeping students from using other applications and the Internet to access unauthorized resources while taking quizzes and exams?

User authentication and a secure test environment are primary concerns to me. I'm a lot more worried about that than I am about whether iPad or other mobile devices can connect to BB.

In 15 years of using BB at two institutions, I have not found Blackboard reps to be responsive to user concerns on this critical issue. I just use other companies' solutions or I just do not give tests in Blackboard. (My current institution's BB version is V9.0.505.15 SP2 with an upgrade happening right now.)

[Amy Sharp]

Kudos! I'm so impressed!

Regards,
Amy Sharp

[Ray]

Kim, with our focus on improving the platform, we currently let partners fill this particular gap, as it’s a specialized form of technology, and I'd encourage you to look to Respondus for secure browser. More on our partner network here: http://blackboard.com/Support/Extensions.aspx.

I apologize for the lack of responsiveness you've experienced - we haven't done a good enough job telling the story about the role that these partners play in general, which may have been a contributing factor. But we've done much to change our organization in the last year to improve those communications and relationships in general and believe it's getting a lot better.