WASHINGTON, Sept. 13, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --
CourseSites™ by Blackboard, the company's free, fully
hosted and supported online course system has been updated to
include a range of new features and support for five additional
languages, Blackboard Inc. (Nasdaq: BBBB) announced today. Already
used in more than 100 countries, CourseSites can now be accessed in
Spanish, Dutch, French, German, and Brazilian Portuguese.
Launched earlier this year, the CourseSites user community now
includes more than 16,000 K-12 and higher education instructors
representing over 9,000 institutions and school districts. The
expanded language support enables instructors and students around
the globe to access the high quality, cloud-based online course
option in their native language.
CourseSites has been updated to include functionality from the
latest releases of Blackboard Learn™ 9.1
for course management and Blackboard
Collaborate™ for live virtual classroom, Web
conferencing and instant messaging. In addition, the system now
features capabilities of Blackboard
Connect™ for Learn, which enables
instructors to send SMS notifications directly from the course to
students.
With the new capabilities and language support, CourseSites
offers users of all types the ability to experience Blackboard's
newest teaching and learning technologies in an integrated, free
solution. CourseSites has proved popular with instructors who do
not have access to a learning management system at their
institution and are looking to experiment with online courses. It
has also been utilized by instructors and administrators who want
to preview Blackboard's latest solutions before their institution
makes a purchasing or upgrade decision.
"We had great success leveraging CourseSites as a free tool for
our faculty when we transitioned to Blackboard Learn 9.1 and
Blackboard Collaborate – I still point new faculty members to it as
they get their courses started," said Robert Jones, director of Distance Education for
El Paso Community College. "The system
integrates the latest functionalities of multiple platforms into
one interface, which helps instructors quickly get accustomed to
the usability. We are also excited to take advantage of the newly
offered languages within CourseSites to help us connect and
communicate with our large ESL student population."
CourseSites contains a range of innovative features including
social learning and sharing tools, dedicated homepages and URLs,
templates to guide course development, themes to allow instructors
to customize the look and feel of courses and the ability to login
using credentials from popular Web sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Blackboard's partnerships with NBC Learn for Higher Education and
McGraw-Hill Connect provide instructors with the ability to easily
add digital content to their courses and create a more centralized
learning environment for students. In addition to being fully
hosted and offering live support for users, CourseSites comes with
a complement of training and course development resources.
For more information about CourseSites, please visit:
http://www.coursesites.com.
About Blackboard Inc.
Blackboard Inc. (Nasdaq: BBBB) is a global leader in enterprise
technology and innovative solutions that improve the experience of
millions of students and learners around the world every day.
Blackboard's solutions allow thousands of higher education, K-12,
professional, corporate, and government organizations to extend
teaching and learning online, facilitate campus commerce and
security, and communicate more effectively with their communities.
Founded in 1997, Blackboard is headquartered in Washington,
D.C., with offices in North
America, Europe, Asia and Australia.
Any statements in this press release about future
expectations, plans and prospects for Blackboard and other
statements containing the words "believes," "anticipates," "plans,"
"expects," "will," and similar expressions, constitute
forward-looking statements within the meaning of The Private
Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ
materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements
as a result of various important factors, including the factors
discussed in the "Risk Factors" section of our Form 10-K filed
on February 18, 2011 and Form 10-Q
filed on August 4, 2011 with the SEC.
In addition, the forward-looking statements included in this press
release represent the Company's views as of September 13, 2011. The Company anticipates that
subsequent events and developments will cause the Company's views
to change. However, while the Company may elect to update these
forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company
specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These
forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as
representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to
September 13, 2011.
SOURCE Blackboard Inc.