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Introduction
Blackboard is well-known as one of the most successful software and
services companies in the higher education marketplace. Today, the
company’s revenues are now more than $377 million per year and, despite
the recession, grew by 21 percent in 2009. With almost 1,200 employees
and more than $100 million in free cashflow, Blackboard is also one of the
most profitable software companies in the education and training industry.
Today, Blackboard’s products are ubiquitous in the higher education
market (now well-used in the secondary education market), and are widely
used for business transactions and other applications in education, as
well. Through a customer-focused strategy of making sure their academic
customers gain great value from the software, Blackboard has built a
huge ecosystem of students, academics and administrators who regard
Blackboard as a foundation for their learning and academic experience.
Approximately five years ago, Blackboard set in place a plan to study and
enter the corporate marketplace. The corporate training market (unlike the
academic market) considers a learning management system (LMS) to be an
administrative system, a training catalog, a corporate compliance-reporting
application and a system for learning. In fact, in the business world, the
LMS still functions primarily as an administrative application with the
actual “learning experience” taking place in a classroom, or through the
use of separate e-learning courses, videos and other forms of content,
which are tracked and managed by the LMS.
In the academic world, by contrast, most training and education is still
led by instructors. So Blackboard’s entire system and focus has always
been to support and enable “instructor-facilitated” learning – giving
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Blackboard Emerges as a Leader in Corporate Learning Solutions
About the Author
Josh Bersin,Principal Analyst
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teachers and instructors very easy-to-use tools to manage classes, share
content, assess students, bring students together online, post and share
assignments, share grades, and facilitate instructional support activities
that may take place online or in-person.
When Blackboard first studied the corporate market, the company
realized that its system was not really suited to be a corporate LMS.
At that point in time, Blackboard was not designed to have role and
domain management, extensive enterprise reporting, and complex
certification and compliance management built in. So the company
decided to focus on the other problems of learning – giving business
users a platform that makes it very easy and cost-effective for instructors
(or trainers) to build, manage and deliver many forms of training.
In the first few years of Blackboard’s product introduction, the
company patiently sold the solution to small training groups with
specific problems. We profiled several of Blackboard’s early customers
(an insurance company training insurance agents, for example) and
found them to be thrilled with the system’s ease of use, low cost and
tremendous degree of flexibility.
Over time as Blackboard further expanded its corporate successes
(including tremendous penetration into the U.S. Army, in which
instructor-led training accounts for millions of hours of education
per year), the company began to find more and more traction. The
product was expanded to include more robust content management,
full SCORM1 and AICC2 compliance, role-based class and student
management, and robust reporting.
Today, five years later, Blackboard has emerged as a significant and very
important player in this market.
1 “Sharable Content Object Reference Model” (SCORM) is a set of specifications for course content that produces reusable learning objects.
2 The “Aviation Industry CBT Committee” (AICC) is an international association of technology-based training professionals that develops guidelines for the aviation industry in the development, delivery and evaluation of computer-based training (CBT) and related training technologies.
Approximately
five years ago,
Blackboard set in
place a plan to
study and enter
the corporate
marketplace.
KEY POINT
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The Size of Blackboard’s Corporate Business
Blackboard’s corporate learning business rivals that of many of the more
well-known LMS companies. The company has more than 300 licensed
corporate customers, all deployed either on the company’s on-premise,
hosted or SaaS platform. Its revenues (which are not publically disclosed)
put the company in the top 10 LMS vendors in the market.
While the company is still not considered a “first-tier” LMS vendor
in many RFP reviews (because the product is not truly a corporate
administration system), we believe Blackboard can add tremendous
value in any small, midsize or large organization. While most large
companies cannot or will not replace their LMSs (except every seven
to nine years through technology obsolescence), they all have sales
training, customer service training, customer training, IT training and
many other groups that need the functionality of Blackboard to make
their training easy and cost-effective.
Source: Blackboard, 2010.
Figure 1: Sample Screenshot – Blackboard
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Key Capabilities of Blackboard’s Product – A Leader in Informal Learning
Blackboard’s corporate solution is clearly designed for “learning and
training” – not only training administration. The system uses the course
catalog metaphor (just like all other LMSs), but then within a course
the instructor and student can easily create modules and assignments,
which may consist of content, assessments, online videos or any other
form of web activity. In a sense, Blackboard allows an instructor to build
out a course without buying a full-blown content development tool.
Source: Blackboard, 2010.
Figure 2: Sample Screenshot – Blackboard Content Development
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But moreover, Blackboard’s learning platform also embeds the concepts
of informal learning (which we define as on-demand, social and
embedded learning) right into the platform. An instructor can create
a blog3, wiki4, discussion activity and content-sharing space within any
course – and can actually ask students to contribute an assignment or
other content as part of a structured learning program.
Rather than just “bolt on” social learning tools to the LMS, in
Blackboard they can be integrated and managed within each individual
course. This gives the instructor or trainer the power to configure and
implement informal learning in his / her own special way.
3 “Blog” is a shortened form of the phrase “web log,” which is a form of personal publishing that readers can discuss.
4 “Wiki” is from the Hawaiian word for “fast” – and stands for web pages that can be collectively and collaboratively edited on the fly by readers.
Source: Blackboard, 2010.
Figure 3: Sample Screenshot – Blackboard Blogs and Journals
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Several examples of this are profiled in our research library. Watson
Pharmaceuticals, for example, uses Blackboard to train its sales team.
Sales training (as we all know well) is best done through a combination
of leader-led training and collaborative sharing by salespeople.
Oftentimes, it is an individual sales rep who has found a highly effective
tool, approach or sales pitch from which others can learn.
In the Watson program, Blackboard is used to not only build core skills,
but to build deep levels of specialization – taking the basic sales training
everyone needs and enhancing it with anecdotal, field-level experiences
that are shared through the online learning experience.
Blackboard has leveraged the platform for many other similar programs,
including Westinghouse’s global training and certification for nuclear
power plant operators. If you question whether Blackboard could
handle an industrial-strength training application, consider the level
of rigor and detail required in nuclear power plant operations. This
problem (like many other training applications) requires a combination
of basic skills and rapid sharing of tacit operational expertise. The
Blackboard solution enables Westinghouse to build and deliver both on
a global scale.
Blackboard Demonstrates a New Model for Corporate Learning Platforms
While Blackboard is not trying to replace most corporate LMS
implementations, the company’s clear and easy-to-use, learning-
focused system is a fresh new solution for corporate training managers.
Companies that want to rapidly build new sales, customer service
and customer training programs (and often find the corporate LMS
too cumbersome to use) can rapidly use Blackboard to manage their
environments. Midsize companies, which do not have the time,
money or staff to support a corporate LMS, can use Blackboard as their
learning platform – and it can be fully managed by a single trainer or
training team.
The company’s patient, customer-focused approach has paid off – and
we expect Blackboard to play an ever larger role in the corporate
learning landscape over time.
Blackboard’s
learning platform
also embeds
the concepts of
informal learning
right into the
platform.
KEY POINT
We expect
Blackboard to play
an ever larger role
in the corporate
learning landscape
over time.
A N A LY S I S
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Research Bulletin | 2010
BERSIN & ASSOCIATES, LLC6114 LA SALLE AVENUE
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Research Bulletin | 2010
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