WASHINGTON, Aug. 18, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Lindsey Wilson College will become one of the first
institutions to move from the ANGEL platform to Blackboard
Learn™ 9.1, Blackboard Inc. (Nasdaq: BBBB) announced today. The
decision was driven by Blackboard's overall commitment to product
and service quality, and the company's ability to consistently meet
and exceed high service levels and support standards set by ANGEL
Learning.
The decision follows an evaluation of several commercial and
open source options, in which students and faculty found Release
9.1 to have a much more intuitive user interface and more polished
look and feel than other LMS options. Users also found that while
most of the systems offered similar capabilities, Release 9.1
offered greater usability overall. College officials were also
pleased with Blackboard's commitment to enhancing the Blackboard
Learn platform with the needs of ANGEL users in mind.
"Like many other institutions using ANGEL, we had our own
questions about Blackboard, but our experience since the
acquisition has been nothing short of exceptional," said
Jeff Parsons, Director of Teaching
and Technology Effectiveness at Lindsey
Wilson. "There were a number of promises and commitments
made to ANGEL institutions, and we're seeing Blackboard follow
through on those. That has meant a great deal to us in thinking
about the decision we wanted to make for the long term."
A small liberal arts college in central Kentucky, Lindsey
Wilson has seen growing adoption of online learning on
campus. As part of its review, college officials placed a high
priority on the ability to easily transfer course content between
systems, and Blackboard's full support for key open education
standards including Common Cartridge clearly set Release 9.1 apart.
Several competing systems were effectively eliminated from the
college's review process after officials determined they couldn't
easily import and export content using Common Cartridge.
"We've focused a great deal on maintaining an excellent
experience for ANGEL institutions, and I'm pleased to see that
those efforts have given confidence to a number of clients that
want to leverage our latest release," said Ray Henderson, President of Blackboard Learn.
"As more ANGEL institutions recognize how serious we are about
product quality and service excellence, I hope they'll be motivated
to consider what we can offer them with the Blackboard Learn
platform."
Lindsey Wilson found pricing for
Release 9.1 to be very competitive with alternative options, and
similar to their existing ANGEL investment. In addition, because
Release 9.1 supports integrations for a range of popular
third-party applications used heavily at the college, officials did
not have to consider making additional investments to change its
other priority technology tools.
"We're excited about all of the built-in social learning tools
and multimedia integrations in Release 9.l, and we expect them to
re-energize our students and faculty to use the LMS to create an
even more engaging and interactive education experience," said
Parsons. "And with many of our faculty and staff working at other
institutions in the area, it was important for us to chose a
platform that they are familiar with and comfortable using. Since
Blackboard Learn is the most popular platform in the state, we knew
training and transition would be a smoother process."
More than 1,500 institutions have adopted Blackboard's next
generation platform to take advantage of its improved stability and
digital content advancements, social learning tools to drive
student engagement and greater workflow efficiencies for
instructors and administrators.
For more information about Blackboard Learn, please visit
http://www.blackboard.com/Platforms/Learn/Overview.aspx.
About Blackboard Inc.
Blackboard Inc. (Nasdaq: BBBB) is a global leader in enterprise
technology and innovative solutions that improve the experience of
millions of students and learners around the world every day.
Blackboard's solutions allow thousands of higher education, K-12,
professional, corporate, and government organizations to extend
teaching and learning online, facilitate campus commerce and
security, and communicate more effectively with their communities.
Founded in 1997, Blackboard is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with offices in North America, Europe, Asia
and Australia.
Any statements in this press release about future expectations,
plans and prospects for Blackboard and other statements containing
the words "believes," "anticipates," "plans," "expects," "will,"
and similar expressions, constitute forward-looking statements
within the meaning of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act
of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated
by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important
factors, including the factors discussed in the "Risk Factors"
section of our Form 10-K filed on February 18, 2011 and Form 10-Q filed on
August 4, 2011 with the SEC. In
addition, the forward-looking statements included in this press
release represent the Company's views as of August 18, 2011. The Company anticipates that
subsequent events and developments will cause the Company's views
to change. However, while the Company may elect to update these
forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company
specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These
forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as
representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to
August 18, 2011.
SOURCE Blackboard Inc.