Integration Corner
Over a several day period in June, a representative group of Blackboard client representatives convened in Washington for the first meeting of the Blackboard Merger Advisory Council. Invited members of this Blackboard-created council came together to offer feedback on the quality and quantity of communications from the company regarding the merger between Blackboard and WebCT and about our priorities and plans for the future.
Discussions with the council members, and the advice they offered, were tremendously helpful to the Blackboard executives and managers in attendance, and the candor of participants was encouraged and appreciated. Because the group is seeking tangible product innovation as soon as possible, they emphasized three key areas that they would like included in the design philosophy for a next generation system:
- Stability of the system is paramount, but cannot come at the expense of ongoing innovation.
- Migration risk must be alleviated; if migration becomes a non-issue, the architecture on which the future product is based will also become a non-issue.
- “Mission-critical” means there cannot be major surprises for clients; “surprises” can come from having to re-document training materials or from realizing they have the wrong hardware for the new version.
In addition, the council encouraged Blackboard to think of a “next generation system” as a next generation solution, which would address the full spectrum of the “student landscape” and encompass our existing concepts of both WebCT and Blackboard solutions under one umbrella, surrounded by services and client support initiatives. MAC members see the next generation as a broad-based means of addressing the future needs of post-secondary institutions as they seek to better serve students and achieve institutional and societal goals. This solutions-based approach is the way to show presidents and provosts how technology can address many of their most pressing current problems and concerns.
Blackboard has invited the MAC members to BbWorld AsiaPac in Australia as a means of promoting connections among clients across continents and product lines and we're looking forward to meeting with those able to attend.