Re: Blackboard & the Innovator’s Dilemma

mlchasen — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:33:36 -0000

Hi Jon,

I found your comments on the innovators dilemma and the eLearning space very interesting (and good photos by the way).

While you did identify some of the typical challenges that existing and established companies have I would like to provide you with some ways in which Blackboard is working to address these challenges and some of the results we have seen.

Blackboard works very closely with a number of educators through our B.I.E. (Blackboard Idea Exchange), our Advisor Councils, structured product testing groups which consist of system administrators, faculty, and students as well as a group of internal e-learning and product development experts. Most of these groups include existing Blackboard users as well as non-Blackboard users. In addition I am personally involved to make sure that our development is not just limited to the many ideas that come out of our client base, but also include items that could be considered “disruptive” technologies in our space – in fact, those types of initiatives are one of the things that excites and motivates our development team.

For example – your comments on student centered learning was very much on point about how it could potentially be a disruptive technology. This is an area we have been discussing with our clients and have incorporated a good deal of into our future roadmap:

• Project NG will include Social Learning Spaces – areas that students can on their own facilitate in group studying and exploration of their own learning agendas, inside or outside the course space.

• In addition, all of the tools in the Blackboard system, including Blogs, Wikis, and Journals, can not only be assigned to a class but will be available outside of the course environment as well and belong to either a social learning space, a group, or an individual.

• The peer review tool which was available in Bb 8.0 allows instructors to start to utilize student centered learning in the course environment as well.

• Dashboards for students and instructors that pull information from all of these sources together organized in the way that people think and work rather than keeping that information inside the course environment, so that it’s easy to see how all of these potential learning environments impact you.

• Also the ability to have learning happen anywhere – inside the course, outside the course, or outside the CMS by allowing e-learning content to be easily pushed to other places on the web like Facebook, the iPhone, cell phones, MyYahoo, iGoogle, or other spaces through RSS feeds also brings the learning to where the student is as opposed to the closed wall environment of the university, or any single interface.

Unfortunately I did not get to expand upon all of these items in my keynote since I try to keep my product demos under one hour ;) but I did want you to know that student centered learning (and user-centric, not course-centric, product design) is a key piece of the architecture of Blackboard’s next generation project and I believe will becoming a meaningful piece of how education will be delivered over the next several years.

Sincerely,

Michael L. Chasen
CEO
Blackboard Inc.

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