 Thanks everyone and Anne-Marie just a wonderful, wonderful chat made me think about my own identity and you know so where I come from I've always been in the software industry and we've always thought about how can software actually help change different industries and I've been in education now for about 10 years and give you a little bit of a background of myself I came from a company called Illuminate which has had a long relationship with ALSI and and we've been doing this conference now I think for a good five or six years very remote people can join in I know today we're actually using Adobe so so a wonderful product in its own right so so it's it's interesting it's interesting to actually be simulcasted in Adobe today it's always fun to fun to challenge your own identity there so let me start out I come here as as a representative of Blackboard today and I decided I would I would start out with what it is that Blackboard thinks of themselves and they have a very expansive sort of vision you know the vision really is everyone educated and I'm not really sure that we'll actually achieve that vision in my lifetime but but I think it's it's a worthwhile thing to obviously aspire towards and the idea is let's let's try to see what it is that we can do to go ahead and get education every place that there is for those who have access let's try to make it a much better experience compared to what it is today and for those who don't have the access let's try to figure out you know how do we how do we actually get there from a from a reach perspective you know Blackboard actually has a has an amazing reach 8700 different institutions from all around the globe including colleges universities k-12 corporate you know and I put this slide up not really to boast about the number of customers that Blackboard really has but the idea that that there's a lot of practice that Blackboard folks have really become used to how do we go ahead and make sure that certain things happen in certain ways and we get the most return on that investment technology is an expensive investment in education how do we make sure that from a practice perspective we are able to go ahead and figure out what the best practices there really are so Blackboard has actually gone ahead and and done a lot of that research and gone out and figured out how it is that we should go ahead and deploy these technologies to be able to get the best return that that's actually possible and you know trying to make sure you know I know that that within all see I've presented to other associations in the US for example the Sloan Consortium which I think is a similar association there the the issue always is how do we and we still seem to be stuck on this after many many years of online education how do we make sure that online education is as good as face-to-face and you know you need to go ahead and almost get beyond that question because there's research out there you know we've had research published by all see by Sloan Consortium by the US Department of Education many other places and what we've been able to do now is basically take that research put it into practice at thousands of customers and hopefully we can go ahead and help help others do the same give you a little bit of overview of what it is that Blackboard actually does most people think of Blackboard and the think of the learning management system the virtual learning environment well that just actually a very big organization now so obviously the teaching and learning the virtual learning environment is there I come from a division within Blackboard called collaborate and I'll get into a little bit more detail about collaborate but I figured I should at least mention the rest of the platforms that Blackboard actually brings to bear so the the learn environment is there the collaborative environment is there there's a there's a product and in a platform called Blackboard Connect and I believe we have some folks from the Blackboard Connect side actually in the in the stand in the exhibit hall and Blackboard Connect is there for mass notification once again the idea really is how do we figure out what technology can do to bring engagement back into education so Blackboard Connect allows you to go ahead and and pick the medium according to what the receiver wants to be so some people might want voicemails other people might want emails other people might want Facebook messages other people might want text messages in order to be able to get the information across to them as an institution you can pick which message you want to send out and then Connect allows you to go ahead and and allow the receiver to pick whichever medium that they want to receive whether it's voicemail or text or whatever the case might be Blackboard Transact is primarily a US based operation and it's really to ensure that when you get the student ID card the student ID card can go ahead and be used in a wide variety of things you can use it for for transactions on your campus for buying meals for using at the bookstore or even going off campus and doing transactions with with local customers or with local merchants and security aspect so being able to get access to the right dormitory room or whatever the case might be so that's the transact piece and the Linux is a brand new piece that Blackboard has just acquired from from a company called iStrategy just at the beginning of this year and the idea there really is how do we make sure that we are able to take all of this data that exists in all the different silos within a university system and be able to go ahead and make decisions based on that you know to a large extent I sort of feel like education is actually a step behind the commercial entities and in this space you know when I'm in the U.S. I sort of use the example of a bookstore they're called Borders Borders had been around for probably 50 years and and just actually finally is going out of business in fact it was the situation was so bad they couldn't find anybody to even buy out the name so the stores are completely being liquidated and I think you know that's sort of a very stark example of an institution which didn't really make that transition to what it is that consumers today really want and I think to a large extent from an educational perspective you know we're getting these consumers you know who are now students or who are now teachers and we need to make sure that that we're able to go ahead and adapt our educational environment so blockbusters was or sorry borders was competing with the with Amazon.com and Amazon.com you know they they're fans of data they collect data on everything that there is they collect data on what you buy they collect data on what it is that you like they collect data on what it is that other people who like things similar to yours they collect reviews they collect reviews about reviews and so all of this data then is is fed into a big analytics database to figure out what is going to be the best experience possible for the person that they're trying to serve you know and from our perspective obviously that's the student and the teachers and we need to go ahead and make sure that we collect all of those analytics and are able to to transform their experience and I think that's what analytics really allows you to do. Mobile doesn't doesn't probably need a lot of a lot of indication I see lots and lots of laptops open some iPads open some some folks I'm sure are doing their email and things on iPhones. I see people pointing to each other so you know you know we don't we don't need to we don't need to talk about mobile that much we know we're experiencing that on an ongoing basis and and the entire educational experience needs to be taken there so Blackboard's obviously working on that and then the the underlying structure is the Blackboard services side so it's a it's a vast vast array of technology that that Blackboard can really bring to bear. What I'm going to talk about today is collaborating and and what it is that we do and how it is that we can really help both you know improve the student outcomes and and how do you how do you go ahead and measure sort of the dollars and cents the return on investment of all of that. I'll set the stage a little bit. The the Blackboard Collaborate Organization actually came into being just last year in August of 2010. Blackboard decided as as their want to do on an ongoing basis to figure out what else their customers might want and they acquired two companies one was called Vimba and one was called Illuminate. Let me just see a show of hands how many people knew Vimba. Good good percentage and how many knew Illuminate. Wow, wow almost the same. So this this was actually true you know across the across the world. We basically split educational institutions into a fairly 50-50 sort of a place where half the folks used Illuminate half the folks used Vimba and when Blackboard tried to get into the space they decided well the best thing to do rather than leaving one half in a lurch is to go ahead and combine all three of the organizations Blackboard and Vimba and Illuminate and and come up with something that's that's that's really best for both you know what it really allows you to do is sort of you know half the people raise their hands and remember half the people raise their hands and Illuminate if you can combine that community of users together hopefully we can go ahead and do something good and I'll share with you a little bit about what it is that we have done. Now before I go there why why you know it says Blackboard Collaborate but really why even collaboration you know what's what's the point of having a collaboration platform you know sort of I kind of talk about you know this is a pretty exciting time for education you know at a touch of a button we can go ahead and have these sorts of sessions so today I'm not sure how many folks are coming in online so 43 folks are coming in online so welcome everybody there you know and that kind of thing is possible they're probably coming in from all over the world and it's so it's it's an exciting time I can go ahead and reach people everywhere that there is but but but at the same time I think it's a it's a tough time you know I looked at the I looked at the brochure for all see and it was thriving in a colder and more challenging climate and and certainly I think we find ourselves in that you know I sort of I sort of talk about this is almost a perfect storm for further education for higher education because we're being asked to do you know three very contradictory things the first one is the number of students actually keeps growing so there's the demographic aspects of that you know more and more children in the world so we need to figure out how to go ahead and educate them there's there's the aspect of the economy where many of the folks are unemployed or underemployed and they want to be able to go ahead and retrain themselves to be doing something else so that goes ahead and increases the number of student count so larger student count than ever before at the same time we're also talking about how do we go ahead and transform education you know we heard the medical education from Anne Marie and and how for the last hundred years we've been hearing this criticism of this curriculum is too big and it's too complex and we need to do better for each of the students so we got way more students and for each student we want to have a much better experience and at the same time the funding keeps going down so the amount of money that we have on a per student basis is lower than ever so it's sort of that perfect storm and and we need to figure out how to deal with that one and I do think that an education focused collaboration environment actually goes ahead and makes a big difference you know it allows learning you know to be to be less structured to be more open you know really allows it to be more interactive more collaborative you know we talked about wikis we talked about Facebook in the in the session before with Anne Marie and and and it's you know you're absolutely right you know there there are there are transformational things that are happening and and you know having that collaboration you know how how else could you have done the the chat chat rooms that you're doing yes the 140 characters is limiting but it's sort of very freeing to be able to actually go ahead and enable this open forum as as and when you want on whichever topic that you actually want so I think that collaboration environment actually makes a big difference and you know specifically from a blackboard collaborate perspective and I think about ROI you know I sort of think about three different things you know the first one is improved outcomes you know that's that's kind of the the goal of education we want to make sure that we do as good a job as possible and adding just a little bit of interaction you know on a on a virtual learning sort of stage we know that students can feel very isolated we know that especially if they're not coming into a physical space like this if they're doing all online they can feel very very isolated so adding just even a little bit of synchronous teacher student interaction student-to-student interaction leads to significantly increased understanding and there's enough research out there on that and if if you folks are looking for that just come talk to me I have my cards and I'll be happy to go ahead and point out some of those things and and send you some papers but the second one is it actually helps universities and colleges sort of increase the revenue we know just like you know borders our our our perimeters are under attack you know we need to figure out how to go ahead and work in this globalized environment so I've got Arizona State University I live in Phoenix Arizona in the United States it's now the largest university that there is in in the States 70,000 students from all over the country and all around the world actually come to Arizona State used to be if I was in a university I could pretty much count on you know the students who are around me as they graduate from high school that they're they're going to come to my university well that's not true anymore right University of Phoenix is all over the place the open university is all over the place Arizona State is all over the place we need to figure out how to go ahead and and be able to deal with those sorts of institutions and I think having a having an environment which allows you to engage students no matter where it is that they happen to be which allows you to engage your community no matter where it is that they are in engage even with your alumni after the leave the the educational process you know helps significantly and then last but not least on the return on investment side is just the reduction of costs in order to really accommodate this many more students who are coming in we can't build enough facilities you know it's just not possible so I know many of our customers instead of doing that what they'll say is instead of meeting in a physical environment three days a week let's just meet in the physical environment once a week or maybe even once a month and the rest of the meetings are all going to happen virtually and it actually leads to being able to accommodate a far larger number of students in the existing space that you've actually got you can go ahead and use the same instructors you can go ahead and reduce travel things like that so so that's kind of the overall view of why it is that you would want to do collaboration in general what does blackboard really do give you just a quick sense of of that piece the blackboard collaborate platform really is three different things and most people are probably used to us from the web conferencing side the web conferencing pieces what we're doing for example with adobe today you know we're going ahead and and broadcasting this event so 43 other people from everywhere can go ahead and use us and and and get access to that content beyond that we've actually got two other pieces of technology one is called the enterprise instant messaging technology this comes to us from the Wimba side of the house Wimba used to have a product called pronto did anybody use Wimba pronto here so we have a few actually that's pretty good that's very good so you know the presence and and chat piece is is actually great you know the the web conference is sort of this formal structure you know you schedule a meeting you schedule a session at a certain time everybody comes together and you're able to go ahead and do the interaction the instant messaging and presence piece is sort of the more informal learning it's the hallway conversations that happen in a physical space you know outside the the structured side so so for example using the blackboard IM as it's called now used to be called Wimba pronto now we call it blackboard IM what you can do is as soon as somebody installs it we'll go out and talk to the virtual learning environment figure out all the different courses that the student is actually enrolled in and we'll go ahead and bring that down we'll also bring down all the different teachers that they have the different classmates that they have the different student services setups that universities might have so financial aid or online libraries any of those sorts of things we can bring all of those services down to IM and now the student can go ahead and have that sort of informal conversation if I'm a working adult I come home at 10 o'clock at night I need to be able to go ahead and finish up what it is that my homework is due for tomorrow how do I do that you know I'm able to go ahead and go out into this blackboard IM environment and just double-click and figure out who else is online and I'm able to go ahead and chat with them and and do my do my homework with those with those folks and all the both the IM and the web conferencing piece are sort of supplemented by the voice authoring pieces is more of an asynchronous piece within the virtual learning environment how do I add personalization so I can go ahead and record an introduction to the course I can go ahead and have students discuss things back and forth using their voice I can even do quizzes for foreign languages and courses like that it's it's much nicer to be able to go ahead and have that voice functionality there and then all three of these functionalities are sort of deeply integrated into whichever learning management system that that you might have so we're able to go ahead and ensure that piece I'm going to go ahead and flip through a few slides and just sort of talk to you a little bit about the impact that we're having so let me show you this video for a second hi my name is dr. Michael Sherman I'm the associate vice president of instructional technology support here at Traxler University in Philadelphia we support the collaborate suite all across the direction University community that's 13 colleges and schools it gets broad use it's accepted by many many different academic units and administrative units as the go-to product when they need to engage their learners their colleagues and very purpose of bringing a tool like the collaborate tool into the environment was to give it that more personal touch in the old days I say the old days you know when we first learned to create distance education courses it almost become like just a static textbook online but once we were able to have this environment that we can utilize like the collaborate environment now it's not only just a student to instructor relationship but it's also a student to student relationship as well so it creates that environment that the students are looking for as well as the instructor converted our curriculum from quarters to semesters and with faculty spread all over the state and with the state budget being really tight with money right now it's difficult to travel so anything that we can do online or electronically having virtual meetings is a tremendous asset for the faculty and for me and for the the budget of this blackboard collaborative plays a very important part in fact without that I think that we could not really truly be a what I call a very efficient and functioning online school that is the one key component to me that makes it worthwhile so that sort of gives you an idea for how it is that people are are actually going ahead and using blackboard collaborate I know I'm short on time so let me go ahead and end on this slide you know the idea behind blackboard collaborate really was to have a single platform which allows you to go ahead and have that informal collaboration between students and teachers and the school entities and services at large to a very formal sort of you know we can go ahead and do classroom sessions we can go ahead and do virtual events you know all sort of combined into one product which is all completely focused around education you know the the blackboard organization 90% of our customers are our education related so we really you know live and breathe education on an ongoing basis and that's you know that's that's really all our all that we all that we really think about you know I'll actually leave it at that and see if there's there's any questions that that I might be able to answer at this point okay once again can we take a question from the floor and please wait for a microphone let's start down the front here hi there David Kernahan from JISC I just wanted to ask you about the very first slide that you showed actually the corporate model of blackboard the everyone educated thing yeah do you see education as something that's got a defined endpoint ah very good point very good question and you know I'm not sure that that education has a defined endpoint you know I know all of us are still learning but I know that many folks don't have access to any education at all so while I don't think that there's an end point for people who have access there's certainly the beginning point that's missing for a lot so I think from our perspective what we really want to be able to do is throughout the life of a learner you want to make sure that the experience of education is better than what it is today and for those who don't have any access at all we want to be able to find ways and work with educational institutions and work with others to figure out how do we go ahead and get them access to at least provide that beginning point you know which which everybody should have access to but no I don't think that that there is an endpoint you know we're continuously learning we're continuously figuring out what it is that we need to do and you know somebody told me you know if I if I think about what's the biggest educational institution right now that might actually be Google you know when I have a question you know I'm usually not going to a textbook I'm usually not going back to my professors I'm actually going and doing that just in time learning and people do that on a daily basis you know billions of times a day so so I don't think that there's an end point at all thanks do you in fact see a time point in the future where something like Google or Blackboard might actually take over managing universities you know it's it's it's interesting you know so Google actually had a thing called the Google Teacher Academy education is a very very complex task and I think so much of the learning actually happens in this interaction you know that we're having right now and and so much of the interaction so much of the learning for each student happens when the students interact with other students and students interact with the teachers and I'm not sure that all of that you know the just in time piece is great you know once I have that critical foundation that got laid for me about how to actually ask a question when I when I need to learn something how do I actually ask that question and then whatever information is coming to me how do I critically understand it and make sure that I can draw the right conclusions from it and I think that education process is not something that that can completely be taken and and learned you know without this interaction piece at all and I think that interaction is really necessary to us think you know when by actually used to have a slogan people teach people you know it's I think that that teacher student piece and the student student piece is very very key and I don't think that that's actually ever going to go with we've we've done that now for 5,000 years and and we know that learning can actually happen that way and it happens that we're very very nicely so to me that continues on I don't think that's actually ever going to go away I don't think Blackboard is someday going to publish a course that says you know start here when you're 5 and then continue taking these courses from 5 to 12 and and you'll have a degree and and that'll be good I don't think that that's that's ever going to happen I think that teacher student interaction is always going to be needed and and and I think you know the breadth of technologies that I showed you from Blackboard you know that's that's a that's a reflection on that we know that it's not just you know create content and create a flow in one piece for for something that can go ahead and flow throughout I think I think the interaction that we've got is always going to be needed thanks could I take an online question of course it's an interesting one is Blackboard nimble enough to provide what Anne Marie was talking about by giving recipients what they want and find ways in which we can professionally accommodate those wants and needs are we nimble enough it's a leading question you know Blackboard has been in business now only for about 15 years and so I think you know to a large extent we still view ourselves as as a fairly small company and you know even though from an educational perspective Blackboard's got a very large footprint you know from a Wimba illuminate perspective the two companies that just became part of Blackboard last year iStrategy which was the analytics company just became part of Blackboard at the beginning of this year you know we always think of ourselves as actually fairly small entities and we're working with customers on an ongoing basis in fact you know nothing that we did I didn't talk a little bit about you know the new product that we just launched we just launched something called Blackboard Collaborate 11 that's the combination of Wimba and illuminate sort of coming together built on the illuminate architecture but inherited the interface design that Wimba had been working on for their future product called livex but every single thing that we did there was as a result of talking to our product advisory council we have product advisory council of 60 different institutions and we met with them you know at the beginning it was once a month then we met into once a week and then we actually went to twice a week where we were forever cycling you know here's what we're building is this a good thing or should we change something different here's option A and option B which one do you think makes more sense to do so to me nimbleness is is in the attitude I don't think it's in the size of the organization and I think as we go ahead and continue to go ahead and cycle through the through the experience that our customers really want I think we can be I think we can be nimble enough I think we can be there to go ahead and provide provide the information and the solutions that people are looking for it's it is the Wild West as as Anne-Marie said you know it's something that you know we're learning on an ongoing basis what should be the what should be the the deal with the Facebook or with Twitter or with Flickr or any of these other wide open consumer technologies in the educational space how do we go ahead and do that balance of privacy versus sharing you know and I think we're learning from our customers we're learning you know what it is that works we're trying to provide parallel solutions so you may not feel very comfortable with you know with just putting everything on Facebook but you need to be able to go ahead and interact with it in some way or the other so we're forever learning on on what it is that we need to do and I think as long as we're doing that and we're talking to customers I think we'll be nimble enough okay on the notes of further learning I'm afraid we're going to have to bring this session to the Thanks once again. Thank you. Thank you very much