Leading edtech company Blackboard has been serving higher education, K-12, and business and government clients around the world since 1997. The Reston, Virginia-based firm is part of a booming market that, according to Triton Market Research, is set to generate revenue of $1169.16 million by 2028.
The recent acceleration and demand for digital learning are partially due to the global pandemic, forcing many students to study from home.
Blackboard has seen clear evidence of this increase, stating that over the last 18 months, the number of institutions implementing SaaS deployment of Blackboard Learn has increased by more than 50%.
"The SaaS deployment of Blackboard Learn has enabled the education community to scale at an incredibly rapid pace as they move towards a more robust, holistic, and data-driven teaching and learning model," said Jim Chalex the Vice President of Product Development at Blackboard. "The foundational role SaaS plays is underscored by the fact that today, nearly 70% of our Learn clients are fully operational on SaaS or have begun planning to move to the cloud."
The edtech firm has also announced the launch of Blackboard Retention Coaching during BbWorld20, the company's annual premier global conference held virtually this year on July 21 and 22. This solution is set to equip higher education institutions with data and insights that help predict when a student needs additional support or intervention, with the hope of boosting retention. Essentially, this platform hopes to bolster their new growth and help continue this steady progression towards digital transformation.
"The global education community has long relied on data and evidence to influence practices and policies, [but] there is a new need to adapt to both sourcing and applying that evidence in a fully-online learning environment," said Rachel Scherer, Senior Director of Data and Analytics at Blackboard. "This need is here to stay, and it invites us to develop a totally different, more intuitive relationship with data as a tool supporting how we learn and teach—with a focus on data democratization. The Reporting Tier represents a waypoint to our continued innovation in this direction through the Blackboard Data platform."
Blackboard also revealed its Blackboard Data Insider Program, which provides eligible clients with early access to new features and functionality inside the Blackboard Data user interface, starting with the Collaborate Ultra Adoption Report.
