My Freshman Year at Blackboard Concludes

In May I marked the end of my first year at Blackboard. And in a few weeks I’ll be on a stage at BbWorld 2010, where I’m accountable for revisiting commitments about what we’d achieve for our customers, partners, and the industry. I’m developing our Report Card for Bb Learn and will deliver a full accounting to our constituency in a few weeks time.

The freshman feedback I’ve received won’t place us on the honor roll. But I’m pleased to share that it’s consistently positive about our direction. Our statistical measures of client satisfaction are trending upwards--especially so in areas around our support experience and responsiveness to problems in the field. Client anecdotes paint a picture of deeds arriving to support commitments. My inbox mix includes more pearls like these:

“Blackboard’s commitment to making the transition from WebCT 4.1 to Blackboard 9.1 at Rhode Island College work for students, faculty and our long-term partnership is much appreciated.” 

“Honestly, I was a bit taken aback when Blackboard bought ANGEL, and I'll admit that I was one of the folks who wore their black wristbands at the AUC last year. Now, however, I am excited about the effect this merger will have on online and mobile education…the company asks and LISTENS to their clients.” [Cowley County College, Kansas]

“We have been using Blackboard software at Temple for the past 10 years and this is the smoothest upgrade we have ever experienced.” 

“I am really impressed with the new Upgrade Program and Client Maintenance Orientation. This all represents a HUGE improvement in customer communication.”  [St. Mary’s College of Indiana]

The first quote reflects our re-energized efforts on behalf of the WebCT community. We’ve done two things that are getting positive notice. We’ve honored a commitment made to include some of the best features of the WebCT CE product in our NG product line. And we’ve made the change management needs of our clients, especially those from WebCT, a much greater focus. We’re seeing stronger adoption of our 9.1 product from this community as a direct result of this work.

The second quote reflects the strong concern amongst the ANGEL community a year ago that the merger with Bb would result in reduced service levels and less product innovation. As this community experiences the stability of support commitment, and a substantive ANGEL influence on Bb policy and practice, optimism has grown. And our intensive investment to build a mobile learning platform demonstrates the positive potential of our union in product terms. 

The other quotes reflect improved fundamentals at Bb Learn. We’ve directed a great deal of energy and client research into the problems of change management, both for new versions and our service releases. While yet imperfect, we’ve improved the quality of our installation process and supporting materials. Our maintenance strategy now includes richer information about what and when we plan to fix to better aid our clients in planning.

The broader K-12 community has also sent a recent signal about our progress. Last month we were recognized by the SIIA with a CODiE award for “Best Course Management System” for the K-12 market. This endorsement confirms that our next generation product in 9.1 has delivered meaningful supporting features for the special needs of K-12 districts, including professional education and parental involvement. 

Finally, we’ve received two important points of industry recognition. First, the National Federation for the Blind awarded Release 9.1 a coveted Gold Star certification – their first award of this type for an LMS product. This award reflects the substantial investment we made in engineering accessibility deeply across our platform.  Second, the IMS Global open educational standards body recognized our Lance Neumann for his stewardship of the Learning Tool Interoperability standards group. This is an important proof point for our commitment to emerging from “participation” to “leadership” in delivering on the promise of open standards in the industry.

So as I wrap up my first year I’m very encouraged about the recognition of our progress. I remain humble about the challenges that we’ve not yet conquered. But our team is showing great fortitude and commitment in pursuing new levels of client focus and commitment. I’m convinced that we have the team and drive to sustain this improvement, and that our best days for our clients lie ahead of us. 

As promised, a more complete accounting/report card to come at BbWorld in July, with notes on what worked, what could have gone better, and more importantly where we plan to go from here. Meantime, I’m happy to hear your thoughts about how I should grade our efforts this year. Just drop me a line at ray.henderson@blackboard.com. 

Cheers!

Ray