News for and about the Internet2 community

[Angela Stark <>]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Cornell University Adopts Blackboard’s Internet2 NET+ Solution and Services Offering

Leading Research University Leverages Jointly Created Learning, Analytics, and Content Solution

 

WASHINGTON – December 8, 2014 – Cornell University is the latest institution to reaffirm and expand their partnership with Blackboard by moving to the company’s customized learning and analytics offering available exclusively to Internet2’s higher education members.

 

Announced earlier this year, Blackboard’s Internet2 NET+ offering was developed in partnership with technology leaders from leading institutions in the Internet2 community, including Cornell University. The offer provides access to the company’s market-leading solutions for teaching and learning, robust analytic and learning outcomes tools, and a cloud-based, cross-institutional content repository.

 

The university will also gain access to Blackboard’s educational services, including technology adoption training and managed hosting deployment, which provides faster system speeds, greater uptime and 24x7 access to technical expertise to help with day-to-day system maintenance, allowing the university to better meet student and faculty demands for system accessibility and reliability.

 

“We are excited to not only leverage Blackboard’s Internet2 NET+ offering but also to have been a part of the team that helped define it,” said Todd Maniscalco, assistant director of academic technologies for Cornell University. “It’s a strong offer that includes many of the features we need to create a holistic teaching and learning environment. We also now have the added benefit of being able to gather best practices from an extremely innovative community of technology leaders and apply them at our own institution to help increase our students’ success.”

 

At the core of the NET+ offer is a fully-featured online and mobile version of the company’s flagship learning management system (LMS) and synchronous collaboration environment. xpLor^™, the company’s open content repository that is standards-based and cloud-delivered, is an integral part of the offer that allows for the collaborative development of course materials within and across institutions and all standards-compliant LMSs. The offer also includes robust analytics tools that aggregate data on student behavior to help improve curriculums, programs and policies.

 

Through the offer, Blackboard is able to collaborate with the Internet2 community through joint initiatives and research on the effective use of analytics, the collaborative development of open educational resources, and flexible but secure identity management, among other topics of critical importance to higher education.

 

Internet2’s NET+ initiative enables higher education institutions to collectively identify and vet cloud solutions to address campus challenges, with the potential to scale to benefit all member institutions’ teaching, learning and research needs. Through a series of increasingly rigorous service validation phases, members closely evaluate the viability of each proposed solution before it is available to all. Internet2 members can learn more about the Blackboard offering by emailing  or visiting http://www.blackboard.com/internet2-netplus.aspx.

 

For more information about Blackboard, please visit www.blackboard.com or follow @Blackboard on Twitter.

Media contacts: 

Lauren Dyke, Blackboard Inc., 202.463.4860 ext. 2860 or 
Angela Stark, Internet2, 202.803.8996 or 

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About Blackboard Inc.

Blackboard is the world’s leading education technology company. We challenge conventional thinking and advance new models of learning in order to reimagine education and make it more accessible, engaging and relevant to the modern day learner and the institutions that serve them. In partnership with our customers and partners in higher education and K-12 as well as corporations and government agencies around the world, our mission is to help every learner achieve their full potential by inspiring a passion for lifelong learning. For more information about Blackboard, follow us on Twitter @Blackboard.

 

About Internet2

Internet2® is a member-owned advanced technology community founded by the nation's leading higher education institutions in 1996. Internet2 provides a collaborative environment for U.S. research and education organizations to solve common technology challenges, and to develop innovative solutions in support of their educational, research, and community service missions. Internet2 also operates the nation’s largest and fastest, coast-to-coast research and education network, in which the Network Operations Center is powered by Indiana University. Internet2 serves more than 90,000 community anchor institutions, 260 U.S. universities, 65 government agencies, 40 regional and state education networks, 85 leading corporations working with our community and more than 65 national research and education networking partners representing more than 100 countries. Internet2 offices are located in Ann Arbor, Mich.; Denver, Colo.; Emeryville, Calif.; Washington, D.C; and West Hartford, Conn. For more information, visit www.internet2.edu or follow @Internet2 on Twitter.

 

 Any statements in this press release about future expectations, plans and prospects for Blackboard represent the Company’s views as of the date of this press release. Actual results may differ materially as a result of various important factors. 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 statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so.