Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google


Blackboard and McGraw-Hill Test New Course System in 20 Pilots

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 01/27/11

A slew of schools are testing out a blend of course management functionality and textbook content that could make for a simpler transition for institutions to the use of more digital curriculum. Blackboard and McGraw-Hill Higher Education have put together an integrated digital course system that combines a single point of access, learning tools, and class content, along with multiple other features.

Currently, 20 colleges and universities are running pilots tests, and an additional 100 instructors are expected to participate. The offering combines the latest version of Blackboard Learn, a learning management system, with McGraw-Hill's Connect and Create. Connect is an application to help faculty create digital course content and assignments and do automatic grading; Create lets faculty compile textbooks that use their own materials as well as content from the company's publishing portfolio.

The joint offering, which has no name, features single sign-on to give users access to all of the programs with one log-in and does automatic grade synchronization between Connect assignments and the Blackboard Learn gradebook. Faculty can build their own textbooks by compiling chapters from the McGraw-Hill catalog and then selling them to students through a link on the course site. Other tools enable instructors to provide students with textual content and recorded lectures, also from within the course site.

The product is expected to be widely available in summer 2011 and will run on Blackboard Learn version 9.1.

"As instructors, we have limited time with our students in the classroom, and have found that digital programs allow us to continually engage with them on their schedule and in an online environment that they are comfortable in," said Kayla Christensen, a lecturer of accounting at Iowa State University, one of the schools that will pilot the new platform. "This solution will give us more time with our students and facilitate on-going learning and assessment through streamlined access to course materials. Automatic grading that provides instant feedback to students, homework, and practice problems will be more effective for students and more efficient for teachers."

Ray Henderson, Blackboard Learn president, believes the new offering will lead to "faster and deeper adoption of digital products" in higher education. "This is the industry's first solution that effectively pairs a top-flight learning platform with high quality, cloud-based publisher content and tools," he said. "What we've built together allows faculty to pair the two systems at a course level with a high level of convenience and a low learning curve."

The companies have provided a video that explains the integrated system online.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • Abstract polygonal hacker with laptop on technology dark background

    Cybersecurity Researchers Identify First Fully Autonomous AI-Driven Ransomware Attack

    Threat researchers at cloud security firm Sysdig have disclosed what they describe as the first documented ransomware operation carried out end-to-end by an autonomous AI agent, with no human typing commands or directing individual steps once the attack was underway.

  • woman

    AI Giants Back Nonprofit Focused on Workforce Transition

    The AI industry's biggest names are investing in more than just models and infrastructure — they're focusing on workforce readiness. OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft and Amazon are backing Raise US, a new nonprofit that aims to raise $1 billion to help American workers prepare for an AI-driven economy.

  • Neon blue security locks with a single red highlight

    AI Shifts Cybersecurity Focus from Finding Flaws to Fixing Them

    For decades, one of cybersecurity's most difficult challenges has been finding vulnerabilities before attackers do. A growing number of security professionals now say artificial intelligence is changing that equation, shifting the focus from discovering flaws to fixing them quickly enough to prevent exploitation.

  • digital brain with network connections

    Microsoft Moving to Internally Developed AI Models in Office Apps

    Microsoft is reportedly using its own in-house artificial intelligence models to handle some workloads in Excel and Outlook, offering new evidence that the company is moving its AI strategy beyond model development and into large-scale cost reduction.