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Blackboard History – Blackboard Campus

Five Leading Institutions Announce Major Initiative with Blackboard Inc. to Make Online Campuses a Reality
4/21/1999 , Washington, D.C. – Blackboard Inc., a leading online education company, today announced that five leading institutions have committed to implementing Blackboard Campus™, the world’s first enterprise-grade academic computing system for online education. Blackboard Campus was selected as the most comprehensive solution to bring the educational and collaborative power of the Internet to students, faculty and administrators at Georgetown University, Boston University School of Management, Florida State University, Mortgage Bankers Association of America and PACE University. Implementation of the online campus platforms is scheduled to begin in early May.

In contrast to existing online education systems, Blackboard Campus goes beyond individual course Web sites to provide a comprehensive online learning environment that can be implemented locally, or hosted offsite. In both cases, Blackboard Campus can be integrated with administrative systems and customized to reflect each institution’s individual look and feel. Blackboard Campus is the final component of the company’s Universal Learning Solutions™ roadmap that enables educators to bring single courses, multiple courses and then entire campuses online. With Blackboard Campus, all five institutions believe they can finally meet their unique goals for using the Web as a platform for teaching and learning.

Georgetown University
Georgetown University has an enrollment of more than 12,000 students and includes four undergraduate schools, graduate programs, law and medical school. Known for its history of aggressive and proactive integration of technology resources, the university implemented Blackboard CourseInfo™ last year to bring standalone courses online. In a movement towards creating a completely integrated virtual campus, Georgetown is migrating to Blackboard Campus to provide greater unification of, and access to, existing online courses, as well as other educational and administrative resources online.

“Our strategy is to continually increase the use of innovative applications in teaching and research,” commented David Lambert, CIO of Georgetown University. “We’re dedicated to using technology for the efficient and cost-effective management of the university, and Blackboard Campus makes these goals readily attainable.”

Boston University School of Management
Boston University School of Management has a 2,900-student enrollment within a University of more than 30,000 students. The School of Management is committed to integrating technology into its curriculum to improve the academic life of its students and create an environment that fosters the development of future business leaders. Many of its courses already have their own Web sites that provide information including class schedules, assignments and faculty hours. Blackboard Campus will now enable The School of Management to use its existing Intranet and effectively extend these first steps to better maximize the use of technology to serve as a collaborative communication tool across all levels of the education equation.

Florida State University
Serving more than 31,000 students, Blackboard Campus is being implemented at Florida State University to establish a dynamic online learning environment for the campus and provide a platform that allows FSU to deliver distance learning classes to several Florida community colleges. Leveraging existing investments, Blackboard Campus will also allow FSU to integrate its disparate IT systems into one comprehensive technology infrastructure across academic and administrative computing, reducing costs and encouraging the sharing of valuable data. With Blackboard Campus, FSU will create a seamless environment linking the entire university’s student body to the faculty, courses, and the institution.

Mortgage Bankers Association of America
The Mortgage Bankers Association of America (MBA) is the preeminent association representing the real estate finance industry with over 3,000 members. Recognized for a heritage of providing extensive education and training programs to its members, they have offered courses via distance learning since the 1960~s using various delivery methods including correspondence, satellite videoconferencing and online seminars utilizing a private network. The MBA used Blackboard CourseInfo last year to enable online training seminars, and have chosen to migrate to Blackboard Campus in an effort to broaden the scale of their existing programs, and provide access to more online learning services anytime, anyplace and anywhere.

PACE University
PACE University is a comprehensive institution that serves nearly 15,000 students in three physical campus locations across New York State. With the implementation of Blackboard Campus, PACE will be able to provide instant access to educational resources for students and faculty at all three campuses, enabling the university to offer a cohesive online environment that supports the curriculum. Blackboard Campus will support PACE’s emphasis on asynchronous learning programs, including several initiatives to train telecom workers worldwide. PACE’s remote learning initiatives are supported by the Sloan Foundation through the Asynchronous Learning Network (ALN), delivering courses to more than 20,000 learners through its member institutions.

About Blackboard Campus
Blackboard Campus is the first enterprise-grade system for supporting the academic activities of an entire college or university. Students, educators and the visitors to an online campus powered by Blackboard Campus experience a thriving, interactive and customized online learning environment that provides access to core academic programs as well as the personality of campus life. The heart of the institution, its teaching and learning, is extended beyond the classroom into a 24-hour online environment. In addition to feature-rich course Web sites, Blackboard Campus opens online access for up-to-the-minute announcements, and campus community interaction. It is the only online campus platform that gives universities the option to be implemented and integrated locally, or hosted by a third-party provider offsite. Furthermore, Blackboard Campus is based on open, scalable technologies and reflects Blackboard’s design work with the Educause IMS standards project.

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