What's Blackboard?

Founded in 1997 with a vision to enable educational innovations everywhere by connecting people and technology, Blackboard is a leading provider of e-Education enterprise software applications and services. Consisting of five software applications bundled in two suites, the Blackboard Academic Suite and the Blackboard Commerce Suite, these products are licensed on a renewable basis.

Our global clients include primary and secondary schools, higher education, corporation and government markets as well as textbook publishers and student-focused merchants. Blackboard and its clients have pioneered the emergence of the e-Education industry around the world.

Blackboard's online learning application, the Blackboard Learning System, is the most widely-adopted course management system among U.S. postsecondary institutions.

Mission
To enable educational innovations everywhere by connecting people and technology.

Vision
Our role is to improve the educational experience with Internet-enabled technology that connects students, faculty, researchers and the community in a growing network of education environments dedicated to better communication, commerce, collaboration and content.

Blackboard's large and diverse community of practice supports, enhances and extends our offerings every day, all over the world. The Internet offers great potential for education and the educational experience. While our role as the platform is important, communities of practice make the best solutions. The value of the network is connectedness. Each Blackboard client makes every other Blackboard client’s solution more valuable as a result of that connection.

The Blackboard Learning System™ is a family of software applications designed to enhance teaching and learning. Intuitive and easy-to-use for instructors, the Blackboard Learning System helps instructors to build course materials online and engage with students in an interactive way.

»Institutions around the world use the Blackboard Learning System to:

• Create powerful learning content using a variety of Web-based tools
• Encourage student interaction, small-group work, and peer knowledge sharing
• Facilitate students or groups using engaging assignments that cause them to reflect
• Enhance student’s critical thinking skills using interactive tools
• Leverage student participation, communication, and collaboration
• Evaluate a student’s progress using a rich set of evaluation and assessment capabilities