FAQs

Q: What is the Blackboard Institute?
A:  The Institute is an independent organization within Blackboard created to help education leaders improve student progression with actionable guidance drawn from Blackboard’s proximity to education practice. 

The Institute will put to work millions of hours spent in partnership with thousands of education institutions tackling tough problems through technology, and offer the education community insight into both the problems and the real practice of addressing them in a multitude of environments.  Additionally, the Blackboard Institute will bring together diverse actors to collectively address challenges that span K-20. 

Q: Why did Blackboard form the Blackboard Institute?
A: We’re fortunate enough to work with a diverse and far-reaching client base. We formed the Institute to leverage the instructive value of this body of practice for moving more learners, more effectively, toward their education goals.  And in collaborating with other groups and leaders across K-20, we seek to bring this perspective to bear on the collective effort to take on tough policy issues.

Q: How is the Institute separate from Blackboard’s sales/marketing initiatives? 
A: The Institute is a separate Blackboard organization whose mission of surfacing and sharing effective practices in education, while complementary to many groups in the company and in the client community, is independent of any particular set of objectives.  First and foremost focused on the issue of improving student progression, the Institute will place significant emphasis on collaborating with other organizations to create actionable practice and policy guidance formed through consensus.   

Q: How is the Blackboard Institute unique?
A: There are a lot of organizations doing great work to address tough education challenges.  What we think is unique about this group, and about the perspective we can help add to ongoing education change efforts, is our close proximity to global education practice at all levels of education at thousands of institutions every day.  That proximity has several important impacts on what we can contribute.  First, it points our efforts to actionable, practice- and data-driven guidance leaders can use to drive change.  Second, it facilitates gatherings of leaders from across education segments who don’t typically or easily come together to work on certain issues, like K-20 student progression. 

Q: What has the Institute done so far?
A: We took our first steps in building the Institute by:

1. Convening "Pipeline Matters Council: Improving K-20 Student Progression" on July 13, 2009, one of few national gatherings where leaders from K-12, community colleges and four-year institutions were in the same room and working together to identify the factors that could increase high school and college graduation rates. Other participants in the 50-person Pipeline Matters Council included business executives and national policymakers.  A full list of participants and their biographies appears at the end of the Council’s report here.
   
   The group stressed the importance of educating policymakers on K-20 as a complex cycle of lifelong learning with many entry and exit points and multiple paths to student success – not just a linear progression from K-12 to higher education. In this dynamic model of learning, dual enrollment, electronic student portfolios and early warning systems will play an important role, according to participants.  In addition to debating the issues, the Council gave us directions on key pain points they would like to see researched.  At the top of the list: dual enrollment as a universal option in every state, an issue that will be the subject of a follow on effective practices research project commencing this fall.
     
2. Publishing our first research work, which focuses on effective practices for fully online programs.  Following in-depth interviews with nine North American higher education institutions with high-performing online programs, the Blackboard Institute outlined key drivers of success – strategy and planning, student experience and measurement – to help institutions learn from the success of others.  The Blackboard Institute's summary of those results can be found here.  In the near-term, we’ll be expanding and deepening the initial scope of this effective practices research.

Q: How does the Institute define dual enrollment for its upcoming research project?
A:  In dual enrollment, higher education institutions partner with K-12 school districts—or community colleges partner with four-year institutions—to offer higher-level course work for dual credit, accelerating completion to a degree for motivated students and engaging learners who have lost interest in their current courses. 

Dual enrollment programs are growing nationally, according to the most recent study done by the U.S. Department of Education.  But while more than half of all colleges and universities enrolled a combined five percent of high school students for college credit, dual enrollment offerings are not available consistently nationwide.

Q: What are the immediate next steps for the Institute?
A: In addition to expanding our research into effective practices in fully online programs, the Blackboard Institute will collectively publish effective practice studies on dual enrollment and make the research widely available to all educators on the Web.  Both sets of effective practices will assist on the ground educators, but also inform the larger policy debate by surfacing and sharing real responses to education’s critical challenges.

The Institute will also continue to facilitate communication between K-12 and higher education to ingrain this more dynamic model for student progression into discussions on what’s next for education.  Additionally, the Institute will address effective practices in all parts of the education experience and in countries outside the United States based on Blackboard’s activities in over 70 countries.