Promoting Blackboard Mobile™ Learn
Welcome to the world of mobile teaching and learning.
As you promote Blackboard Mobile Learn at your institution, we want to help youexplain the benefits and create excitement amongst faculty and students tobuild momentum in their adoption.
Thisdocument is organized into the categories of Who, What, How, and When to help identify the major categories of information to contemplate as you planto promoteBlackboard Mobile Learn. The advice we offeris comprised of best practices we’ve learned while collaborating with your peers throughout the global Blackboard community.
You may need to add to or adapt the informationcontained here to meet the specific needs of your institution, but we hopethis document will help you create an effective promotionplan.
WHO:Example list of the audiences with whom you should communicate
WHAT:Messages you could communicate to different audience members
HOW:Checklist of ways to spreadnews about Blackboard Mobile Learn at your institution
WHEN:Example timelineto help prepare everyone at your institution for mobile teaching and learning
The WHO of Your Plan
You know best the challenges, concerns, and interests of your campus stakeholders and how to communicate with them most effectively. The outline below is just a reminder of the groups and individuals with whom you will want to communicate about Blackboard Mobile Learn. The descriptions and statements provided in the next section will help you address questions they may raise while you introduce mobile teaching and learningto your institution.
- Institution Leaders
- SAMPLE TITLES: President, Provost
- FOCUS: Concerned with the overall effectiveness of your institution’s mobile teaching and learningprogram as it contributes to campus identity, improves student achievement and helps obtain institutional goals
- IT Leaders/Management
- SAMPLE TITLES: CIO, Director of Academic Technology
- FOCUS: Concerned with the resources required, overall success of the program, ongoing product enhancements and support, and the availability of training resources
- Academic Department Leaders
- SAMPLE TITLES: Academic Deans, Instructional Designers, Faculty
- FOCUS: Concerned with adoption rates, ease of use, rendering engaging content on mobile devices, and minimizing non-teaching administrative tasks for instructors
- Faculty
- SAMPLE TITLES: Professors, Instructors, Lecturers, Facilitators
- FOCUS: Concerned with a possible learning curve to use mobile technology, the quality of features and functionality,support and student adoption
- Students
- FOCUS: Concerned with access to mobile technology, support,faculty adoption of Blackboard Learn, and mobile learning features and functionality
The WHAT of Your Plan
We hope thedescriptions and statementsabout Blackboard Mobile Learn we offer in this section will make your work rolling it out to your institution easier. Feel free to copy and paste the statements offered below into the communications you plan.
(You also may want to reviewthe other documentscontained in theBlackboard Mobile Learn Adoption Kit for further details, such as FAQs and application download instructions, to include in your communications.)
NEW CAPABILITIES: “What’s in Blackboard Mobile Learn?”
Blackboard Mobile Learn takes interactive teaching and learning mobile, giving faculty and students access to their courses, content and organizations on a variety of popular mobile devices, including Android,BlackBerry and Apple devices. Soon Blackboardalso will support any web-enabled mobile phone through a mobile web version of Blackboard Mobile Learn.
Blackboard Mobile Learn extends our existing Blackboard Learn implementation by giving faculty and students access to all of their course content currently available via the web, with the added ability to access documents in multiple formats, post announcements (instructors only), create discussion threads and posts, and comment on blogs and journals (instructors only) –all from the palm of their hands and while on the go.
NO-COST OPTION: “What does Blackboard Mobile Learn cost?”
Blackboard understands the importance of mobile teaching and learning, and that resources are constrained in our economic environment. They invested heavily in helping us bring Blackboard Mobile Learn at no additional cost to our institution.
Through a partnership Blackboard built with Sprint, we can offer Blackboard Mobile Learn to our faculty and students with Sprint Android and BlackBerry mobile devices at no cost, and free on a Wi-Fi-only basis on the Apple iPad, iPod touch and iPhone.
Our users of Blackboard Mobile Learn can quickly and easily download the free applicationsfor their mobile devices from their app stores.
SPRINT PARTNERSHIP: “What’s Sprint’s role in the Blackboard Mobile Learn offering?”
Sprint is committed to fostering mobile teaching and learning in higher education. They want to improve and enhance the education experience for students and are investing heavily in mobile broadband coverage for education institutions by increasing 3G network reliability, building a powerful new 4G network, and offering popular BlackBerry and developing new Android devices.
TRAINING AVAILABLE: “How do we prepare our Blackboard Mobile Learn users?”
We have from Blackboard brochures and quick-read guides about Blackboard Mobile Learn that explain how it enables faculty to easily reach students outside the classroom and students to remain connected to their course experiences virtually at anytime, from almost anywhere.
Blackboard also has made available a series of free, brief video demonstrations that explain how to use Blackboard Mobile Learn on a wide range of popular mobile devices, which makes training easy by quickly familiarizing users with the mobile technology and new features.
Matching Value Statement and Audience
The outline below may help you whileplanning which descriptions and statementsabout Blackboard Mobile Learn are most appropriate for specific audience members at your institution:
- Institution Leaders:
- New Capabilities
- No-cost Option
- Sprint Partnership
- IT Leaders:
- New Capabilities
- No-cost Option
- Training Available
- Academic Department Heads:
- New Capabilities
- Training Available
- Faculty:
- New Capabilities
- Training Available
- Students:
- New Capabilities
The HOW of Your Plan
Here is a checklist of communication platformsto consider as you build your promotion plan:
Websites– Place banners on key institution websites to promote mobile teaching and learning and Blackboard Mobile Learn.
Knowledge Warehouses/Dept. Wikis/Blogs – Leverage internal knowledge repositories to share information.
Letters/Emails– Contact your faculty and studentsdirectlyto share information, and encourage them to download and use the free applications available for their mobile devices.
Faculty Meetings/Dept. Meetings/Student Group Meetings – Meet with your stakeholders during their regularly scheduled meetings to provide updates on the planning and promotion process.
Faculty Lunch-and-Learns – Schedule events for faculty to share ideas about mobile teaching and learning, to engage them further and increase their excitement. Theseevents are great opportunities foryour early adoptersto explain Blackboard Mobile Learn in theirown words.
Listservs/Twitter/Facebook – Leverage popular social media tools at your institution to generate awareness.
Posters/Flyers/Postcards/Tent Cards– Post and place themaround campus to raise awareness and build excitement for mobile teaching and learning. Many ready-made samples are included in the Blackboard Mobile Learn Adoption Kit – simply print and promote.
Campus Media/School Newspaper/Local News Outlets – Leverage these media channels to raise awareness of mobile teaching and learning at your institution, and inform faculty and students where and how they can download the free applications available for their mobile devices.
As you develop the communications mentioned above, you likely will want to include in them a call to action, to guide your audience to download the free applications available for their mobile devices or obtain further information.
Here are some of the online resources Blackboardand Sprint offer that may be help:
- Blackboard Mobile Learn Adoption Kit:
- Student and Faculty FAQ Blackboard Web Page:
- Video Demos of Blackboard Mobile Learn:
- Sprint Information Web Page on Blackboard.com:
- Sprint in Higher Education Web Page on Sprint.com:
Digital resources included in the Blackboard Mobile Learn Adoption Kitcan also help you develop your communications. Blackboard Mobile Learn graphics and editable brochures andemail templates are ready-made and available for download.
The WHEN of Your Plan
While informing your institution about mobile teaching and learning and the availability of Blackboard Mobile Learn, here is a sample outline of important steps to plan for, communicate to your stakeholders, and trackwhen and how you successfully achieve them:
- Install Blackboard Mobile Web Services Building Block™
- Install Building Block in Blackboard Learn environment either by downloading it from Behind the Blackboard™ or upgrading to Blackboard Learn, Release 9.1, Service Pack 1, which includes a pre-bundled version of the Building Block
- Have group of instructors test
- Identify best practices and potential issues
- Provide feedback to aid in training others
- Offer Blackboard Mobile Learn Training
- Provide sneak peaks
- Deliver hands-on training
- Make video demonstrations available
- Blackboard Mobile Learn Goes Live
- Inform campusthat mobile teaching and learning is here
- Promote download of free applications by faculty and students
As you promote Blackboard Mobile Learn at your institution, we hope this planning document helps make your work easier.
The Sprint team, Blackboard’s partner in helping bring mobile teaching and learning to higher education, is also ready to assist with advice and additional resources. If you would like to speak with the Sprint team while planning your promotion activities, or want to arrange a campus event with them, you can contact them directly .