E-learn Weblog of Willem van Valkenburg

Vandaag kreeg ik een uitnodiging om tijdens de Bb World EMEA conferentie deel te nemen aan een discussie over het nieuwe Blackboard Beyond Initiative. Het doel van dit initiatief is om te komen tot een e-learning 2.0 visie. Dit is opgedeeld in vier projecten:

• Extending the platform: e-Learning 2.0 is about personalizing the e-Learning environment to be more discipline and pedagogically specific to the educational activity at hand. This more tailored platform experience can be achieved through specialized software extensions developed by and for educators, as well as with rich, interactive digital resources. As part of the Initiative, Blackboard announces its plans to establish a Global Learning Objects Catalogue, in which any Blackboard user can publish to or search for learning resources to enhance their instructional experience.
  
• Facilitate Social Networking: e-Learning 2.0 is about enabling a social experience that recognizes the course is but one social-organizational group in a broader education environment. To help foster academically oriented relationships outside of the class environment, Blackboard announces plans to connect students and faculty across disciplines and across institutions through a new Scholar.com Web service. Scholar.com will provide users with the opportunity to communicate and collaborate with other experts in and outside of their discipline and fields of interest.
  
• Enable Lifelong Learning: e-Learning 2.0 is about integrating the educational journey students take from elementary school to higher education to the workplace. As more and more faculty and students use e-Portfolios to store and showcase their scholarly achievements, Blackboard announces a unique "e-Portfolios-for-life" service that will allow Blackboard users to post their portfolios to a central site for long-term use.
  
• Create Network Learning Environments: e-Learning 2.0 is about moving beyond the course towards a more holistic conception of a networked learning environment. One consequence of this shift is a hunger by educators to conduct research and benchmark various e-Learning strategies and programs using data from peer institutions. As part of the Initiative, Blackboard announces a collaborative data warehouse service which will allow clients to anonymously share relevant data and gain better insight into best practices.

Het initiatief klinkt wel interessant en de onderwerpen die ze gekozen hebben als eerste projecten zijn zeker interessant. Dit hele initiatief is de aanzet voor het nieuwe product dat Blackboard en WebCT moet vervangen, dus het zal nog wel ff duren voordat het klaar is. De vraag is ze niet te laat zijn.