We wanted to share with you some wonderful information sent to us by Blackboard Inc’s Higher Education Account Executive, Scott Caplan, in regard to a few additional resources Bb is offering to everyone within CUNY.  His full letter is below.

By Kristen Lindtvedt

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Now that each of your schools has transitioned from traditional and hybrid courses to 100% remote teaching, I wanted to check in and offer additional resources that may be of assistance.

  • Blackboard Academy and Training Resources – All Customers – These include free Blackboard Academy courses for transitioning to online, as well as a number of discounted and free training options for clients to help them train their staff for online delivery, convert courses to online, and train for the use of our tools, including Learn and Collaborate. Go into Blackboard Academy Catalog and select FREE COURSES from the type of courses on the left hand menu.
  • Accelerate Your Transition to Remote Instruction – All Customers – We’re also offering a free Webinars training series for faculty. These Webinars cover the basics of Blackboard Learn, teaching a virtual class (using Blackboard Collaborate Ultra), building mobile content, and creating assessments and assignments in Blackboard Learn. In addition, Blackboard Academy is now offering courses in the Transitioning to Online Teaching Certificate at no cost to faculty.
  • https://www.blackboard.com/resources/accessibility-checklist – All Customers – We are addressing the need for solutions for accessibility and universal design in a fully online learning environment. We have created a free accessibility checklist for instructors to efficiently check and remediate their course content, and are launching additional resources to support students using mobile devices, assistive technologies, and study tools. 
  • Integration of Microsoft Teams with Blackboard Learn – https://blog.blackboard.com/supporting-continuity-of-education-with-blackboard-learn-and-microsoft-teams/  Microsoft has created an application that allows instructors to create a Teams meeting and share that with their students. We’ve turned that application into an LTI Advantage tool that can be integrated with Learn. Our integration allows users to launch Microsoft Teams Meetings directly within any Learn course. 
  • https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Administrator/SaaS/Integrations/Microsoft_Teams 
  • community.blackboard.com/groups/home/99  – This is regularly updated by Blackboard and other higher education customers on how they are managing through this COVID-19 situation.

Blackboard is continuing to increase our capabilities to help you during these challenging times. If there is something that you need help with or would like to see Blackboard look into, please let me know. 

Scott Caplan