BB NexGen

Ok, it always seems to be the case that when I mention Blackboard, I get all manner of hits from their office, so here we go again.

I was in a webinar this morning taking a look at the potential new features of the “new LMS product to be named in July”. There was no non disclosure, but I’ll still try to generalize what was talked about. Nothing there was set in stone and in the end, whatever NexGen turns out to be may be nothing like what I’ve written (clipped from an internal email).

Now the potential features:

• This system will integrate other LMS and function more as an OS than anything else as it will handle login across platforms as well as dealing with content sharing between IMS/SCORM aware applications. This means that if you are on Moodle/Sakai or what have you, BB will handle the login and the student who is taking courses in CS, Anthro and Extension has only one place to log on and get access to their courses. It also means for the instructors – if you build on one system, you can move to the other if there is a feature that you like there as much of your content will carry over.
• Learning tools are built around the community learning/constructivist model with users being able to select local “networks” (think Facebook or Flickr) to join to gather expert resources. This will be augmented by a world wide Blackboard institution based network as well – so our students will be able to share with students in UBC or other BB/WebCT installs through a common website. This means that if you have research groups set up as a course in the system, you will have the same benefit of community.
• A system for tracking of every element of learning, research or admin processes – goals, outcomes and curriculum/project plans if they are in the system. This can allow supervisors/advisors to see what their students are doing in terms of completing objectives in their course planning, it will allow researchers to identify goals in the same manner and allow departments to see how curricular objectives are being met. This is the “Cadillac” SIS (Student Information System) that has been built hundreds of times on campus and many times in the faculty to do all manner of reporting.
• It is mobile friendly – it will work well with mobile web technologies that are becoming increasingly important.
• Standards based, open APIs to allow for custom applications to be built to extract data or perform other tasks such as integrating with other systems.