Blackboard Announces New 'Institutional Effectiveness Platform'; Patents Pending

From today’s press release:

BbWorld Europe, Nice, France – February 26, 2007 – Blackboard Inc. (NASDAQ: BBBB), a leading provider of enterprise technology to the education industry, today unveiled, at the Annual BbWorld Europe 2007 Users Conference in Nice, its latest and most significant product offering, the Blackboard Outcomes System™ in front of 400 European and International e-Learning leaders. The new solution facilitates the continuous improvement of academic and administrative processes with a focus on student learning, academic programs and co-curricular activities.
 
The Blackboard Outcomes System is a comprehensive, flexible platform to guide institutional effectiveness across the entire higher education institution or system– from classrooms to the President’s Office. It was developed with guidance from national assessment experts and dozens of academic institutions including private teaching colleges, research universities, systems, and community colleges.  The Blackboard Outcomes System leverages the capabilities and familiar user experience of the Blackboard Academic Suite™ to help institutions make evidence-based decisions, streamline assessment processes, and engage students in their own learning.

I think it’s interesting that Blackboard is calling Outcomes its “most significant” product offering. That gives you some sense of where they think their market is going and where they think the bulk of their business is going to be in the future.

Note also that many of Blackboard’s recent patent applications (reported by Mark Oehlert) appear to be related to this new product.

Michael Feldstein is the founder of e-Literate who currently works as the Senior Program Manager for MindTap at Cengage Learning. For more information, see his profile page.

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