Upgrading to the Q4 2017 release? Here are resources that may help.
Creating communications and sharing details with your educators and students about an upgrade is critical, but it also can be time consuming and tedious – we’re working to make it simpler.
Why recreate the wheel? To help expedite and simplify the creation of communications about upgrades to your users, we’ve created this Communication and Adoption Toolkit. Below, you’ll find a variety of customizable resources that will provide a solid starting point for communications that will resonate at your institution. They are written to help you generate awareness, excitement, and ultimately adoption of the new functionality and enhancements introduced in the most recent releases of Blackboard Learn (Q2 2016 through Q4 2017).
The resources below have been created for you to re-use at your institution. Feel free to repurpose and modify these resources to best meet your needs.
Resources that cover what’s new
You don't need to create everything from scratch. The following flyers and feature guide can be used on your institution’s web properties or distributed by email to generate excitement about the latest Blackboard Learn updates.
Flyers for Academic Technologists: Overview of the latest releases for you and your IT staff.
- Moving from the Q4 2016 release?
- Moving from the Q2 2016 release?
- Moving from the Q4 2015 release?
Flyer for Educators: Overview of the latest releases for you to share with your instructors. These cover the Q4 2017, Q2 2017 and Q4 2016 releases of Blackboard Learn.
- that you can customize
Feature Guide for Educators & Students: Details the new end-user functionality within recent releases for you to customize and distribute to your educators and students.
Email templates for Educators & Students: Customize these email templates to spread the word about your Blackboard Learn upgrade and what’s new.
- For Educators:
- Moving from Q4 2016?
- Moving from Q2 2016?
- Moving from Q4 2015?
- For Students:
- Moving from Q4 2016?
- Moving from Q2 2016?
- Moving from Q4 2015?
Web resources and webinars
The following list includes additional web resources and webinars that you may want to share with your educators, students, and academic technologists.
- Mobile responsiveness GIF: Share this GIF with your educators and students to get them excited about the responsive design of the new theme for Blackboard Learn, which enables them to have a great experience on all devices and screen sizes without losing the ability to perform any of the functions they require.
- Blackboard Innovative Teaching Series (BITS): Invite your educators to this training initiative that was developed to help augment (not replace) your internal training efforts. Harnessing our community of users, BITS webinars share the top strategies and pedagogy for both increasing educator efficiency and improving learning outcomes. Educators can register for live webinars or watch recordings of past events.
- Blog: The Original Experience for Blackboard Learn: Delivering on our Vision: Share this blog with your Academic Technology staff and other relevant leaders to inform them of our commitment to Blackboard Learn with the Original experience and recent investments and focus areas.
- Blackboard Community: Invite your institution to connect with the Blackboard community through our Community site.
Communication checklist
Building a communication plan from the ground up takes time. That's why we've developed the checklist below to help guide your strategy.
Plus, check out the following blog post on the Blackboard Community Site: “Marketing” technology change: 5 tips to promote technology adoption
| Channel | Suggestion |
|---|---|
| Web tiles and pages | Add social tiles on key institutional webpages.
Build out a dedicated page or section to discuss what's new in Blackboard Learn. |
| Wikis and blogs | Build knowledge repositories to share information.
Link back to one or two content pieces shared above. Don't like writing? Then just re-post one of our blogs. |
| Announce upcoming changes via email.
Broaden your reach. Include administration, faculty, staff and students in your communications. Attach the appropriate flyer(s) provided above to your emails. |
|
| Flyers | Hang the 1-page flyer provided above around campus on faculty bulletin boards. |
| Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn | Leverage social media to generate awareness and excitement.
Follow @Blackboard for relevant software announcements. |
| Faculty and student newspapers | Faculty and student newspapers are a great way to get the word out.
Consider giving a student reporter a sneak peek at the new software so they can share reactions. |
| Key stakeholder meetings | Many of the tools in the newest release are very compelling for Deans, Academic leaders, faculty and students so it's worth the time ensuring they all have visibility into this initiative.
Academic leadership meetings, Dean meetings, Faculty Senate meetings, and Student Senate meetings all provide a great opportunity to build awareness, interest, and support. |
| Faculty training | Schedule training - online, in-person, or even one-on-one - whatever works best at your institution. |
For additional Communication and Adoption Toolkits you may find helpful, click here.
If you have any comments on the tools you see on this page or if there is a tool that you want us to add, please send us your feedback.
