painting by the numbers...or not.

painting by the numbers...or not.

Notes from the CEO Keynote, BlackBoard World, 2013:

OK, maybe an odd metaphor to open my coverage of CEO Jay Bhatt's keynote, but stick with me..

Much of what's typically delivered in a corporate keynote has all the sexiness of an SEC filing. Props to Mr. Bhatt for trotting out the family snapshots to underscore the fact that in his house, as in most of ours, we're increasingly wired all the time.  Thinking about the future potential of the intersection of  mobile tech and learning, Bb crafted a white paper on six trends:

global education

• by 2020, 4 in 10 learner s will come from china and India
• non trad learners
• 85 percent non trad enrollment by 2020
• consumer preference for alternative models
• learner centric models
• competencies
• big data in the mainstream
• importance of analytics
• online and mobile everywhere
• online is 10X the growth of traditional enrollments

findings

• Bb believes they have phenomenal products. well, ok, they could be better (that's Jay talking, not me)
• great customer relationships
• focus on the continuum of learners

issues

• lack of product line integration
• not working with customers in a coordinated manner
• be a better citizen in the Ed Tech industry
• constraints on Bb employee creativity and innovation

What is core? A product company (hmm, deemphasizing services)

and here's the mantra

• accelerate
• integrate
• innovate

How?

• accelerate investment in products
• address product integration
• drive innovation

Next up, the always erudite Ray Henderson...

In tradition, Ray walked through the report card. Interestingly, the need for innovation was echoed by Ray-adding "innovation" to the report card this year.

statements regarding something like a course creator wizard made me think of the semi-mythical LAMS. I think we heard a hint about the efforts currently underway to think about personalization. I do get a kick when what seem like no-brainer revamps to adress issues get a round of applause. "yay! you fixed something we all knew was problematic".

Bb meeting room (baby Collaborate?) will be bundled in Learn-nice touch!

Major improvements in Learn/Collaboration integration:

• every course will have a permanent room
• every instructor will have a permanent room

polls via Mobile-lots of buzz from the Twitterati on this Tuesday. Maybe the clicker killer? Only if it also takes attendance...

Usability issues in the grade book are being addressed; scrolling a d look ahead search should aid in super sized lecture sections.

(now, I'll take a minor bow on this next one)
OpenBadging integration is coming- mainly because SUNY drove this need in our OER101 MOOC. (damn it, I said "MOOC". sorry.)

Student behavioral pattern recognition in development, building on the new Retention Center. I'm still fuzzy on how this plays against their own analytics platform or third party systems like Starfish (or D2L's predictive analytics, for that matter.

next up, Katie Blot of Ed Services...

disclaimer: I always get a little squirmy when a corporate type starts painting a shiny future in education. After all, BillGatus of Borg got booed at SXSWedu by the crowd. And no offense, but these talking poi st are what I think about every day. And I know what the non-trad enrollments look like, so unicorns and rainbows don't play well  with me.

Ok, so MOOC MOOC MOOC... ah wait...10 or so minutes in we're talking about a platform for MOOCs that will support 40 million users. And it will support split credit/non-credit delivery. And it's free to Bb customers. Holy sh...